A magician with Incompetent (Spellcasting), Oh my god, he's insane... Options

[Yerameyahu]

Wait, what? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Just so I'm not confused: Aspected Magician is a Negative Quality like any other. You also must take Magician or Mystic Adept, you *can't* take Incompetent for affected skills, and you can only take Aspected *once*.

It would indeed be funky if it didn't count toward NQ limit. Hmm.

[rofltehcat]

A friend of mine ran a sniping oriented Summoner/Counterspeller mage a year or two ago and he was pretty nasty even with the self-imposed limitations. You can come out of chargen with Synaptic 2, Muscle Toner 4, Summoning and Counterspelling while still maintaining a useful Magic of 3 if you really want to-- with a specialization and the right Mentor or Focus you should be able to summon at Force 6 with fair reliability, although physical drain isn't fun. In a larger group such a character can suffer a bit compared to super specialists-- it lacks the sheer utility of a generalist magician or a street samurai's raw toughness-- but in a 3 or 4 person team such a build can be a real terror.

And yeah, Aspected is just a mess these days, especially compared to Incompetent.

That sounds like an interesting character concept. Got any more details on it?

[Whipstitch]

It's been a while, so I really only remember the character's personality and major dice pools. He had Mountain as a Mentor, so he was detail oriented, stubborn and patient. He wasn't really a stealth specialist but with a 9 agility he could default to 8 dice and could back it up with Concealment. The really sick thing was when he initiated twice and bought a Force 2 Shielding focus. 15 dice in longarms before smartlink on top of the counterspelling meant he was really good at geeking mages. We ended the campaign fairly soon after though, since things can really start getting wacky after after 2 dozen karma in an Awakened heavy group.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

It's been a while, so I really only remember the character's personality and major dice pools. He had Mountain as a Mentor, so he was detail oriented, stubborn and patient. He wasn't really a stealth specialist but with a 9 agility he could default to 8 dice and could back it up with Concealment. The really sick thing was when he initiated twice and bought a Force 2 Shielding focus. 15 dice in longarms before smartlink on top of the counterspelling meant he was really good at geeking mages. We ended the campaign fairly soon after though, since things can really start getting wacky after after 2 dozen karma in an Awakened heavy group.

Define wacky...

Playing in a game where 80% (4 of 5) of the characters are Awakened, with ~ 90 Karma... Not wacky yet... so I am unsure what you may be referring to...

[Hagga]

Dicepool heavy. Very dicepool heavy. Not quite pornomancer bad, but it gets up there.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Dicepool heavy. Very dicepool heavy. Not quite pornomancer bad, but it gets up there.

With only a couple of dozen Karma? Really? Most dice we have in our Awakened game is about 12 Dice or so (14 with our Oh So High-Tech TacNet, but not for magic obviously)
Hmmmmm.....

Even in our 300+ Karma Game, we have none of that... though we do have a Technomancer who can scrape together about 24 Dice or so for Spoof, with Sprite help and Threading anyways... but still, that is FAR from Pornomancer Levels... and he is really the only one, and only for Spoof...

Interesting...

[Whipstitch]

Like I said, this guy hit the streets with 15 dice without the benefit of a specialization or smartlink. A run or two in he was rocking 19 dice when using a smartlinked T-250 Defiance (we didn't run unwired so no tacnet) and was contributing around a dozen or so dice worth of Counterspelling prowess when defending against Combat Spells by the time we quit. He was a mage that lived by "geek the mage." Ultimately we kinda decided that in general we liked lower powered games than that.

Full disclosure: I'm not really trying to blame this on Awakened or even karma advancement, per se. The Muscle Toner 4 was at least as responsible for his effectiveness as the Shielding/Mentor/Focus stack was and he had that at chargen.

[Mäx]

was contributing around a dozen or so dice worth of Counterspelling prowess when defending against Combat Spells by the time we quit.

I wouldn't say that around 12 dice for counterspelling is very high dice pool.
My 750 karma starting mys-ad has 19 dice for counterspelling, ofcource being third grade iniate with shielding and force 3 shielding focus plays a big part in that.
But he only gets really nasty when he can iniate once in play and pick-up absorption, raising the pool to 24 dice, thats 8 successes on avarage, meaning he eats force 8 or lower spell whole. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Dakka Dakka]

How do you get to that pool? You do know that for spell defense only the counterspelling skill is added, not MAG+Counterspelling?

[Mäx]

How do you get to that pool? You do know that for spell defense only the counterspelling skill is added, not MAG+Counterspelling?

Where exactly does it say that, counterspelling is after all linked to magic.
But if that's true then subract 4 from those pools.
Also there was supposed to be a mention in that post that those pools are for countering combatspells, but those are the ones you most often need protection from.

Breakdown:
Magic 4+ c ounterspelling 5 + shielding 3 + shielding foci 3 + spec 2 + mentor 2 = 19 dice
after one more iniation and bigging up absorption that becomes
Magic 4+ c ounterspelling 5 + shielding 4 + shielding foci 3 + spec 2 + mentor 2 + absorption 4 = 24 dice

[StealthSigma]

Is it viable to make a character that is Incompetent in Spellcasting and Summoning but fantastic at Counterspelling and Banishing and utilizes mundane skills/gear/attributes for combat?

[Ascalaphus]

Is it viable to make a character that is Incompetent in Spellcasting and Summoning but fantastic at Counterspelling and Banishing and utilizes mundane skills/gear/attributes for combat?

It probably is. The pile of Incompetence makes it pretty affordable. You could even make it a Mystic Adept to make sure you can't astrally project, and to cut PQ costs further.

IIRC, regular Banishing uses Magic, but Attacks of Will don't. Still, with Banishing those are a lot more effective. Counterspelling doesn't use Magic, you just need to be a Mage to be allowed to buy it. Invest in Willpower and Charisma.

I gotta say, I'd almost consider building this "Nullmage".

[StealthSigma]

It probably is. The pile of Incompetence makes it pretty affordable. You could even make it a Mystic Adept to make sure you can't astrally project, and to cut PQ costs further.

IIRC, regular Banishing uses Magic, but Attacks of Will don't. Still, with Banishing those are a lot more effective. Counterspelling doesn't use Magic, you just need to be a Mage to be allowed to buy it. Invest in Willpower and Charisma.

I gotta say, I'd almost consider building this "Nullmage".

It's actually the kind of spellcaster I would like to play. I tend to have an aversion to spellcasting because of how convoluted all the systems are for casting spells (regardless of RPG). Then all the god damn record keeping with what spells you know or can know. Ugh.

[Aerospider]

Where exactly does it say that, counterspelling is after all linked to magic.

SR4A page 185:

"When a protected character is targeted with a spell, she rolls Counterspelling dice in addition to the appropriate attribute (body or Willpower) for the resistance test."

They should really have stated clearly that the Magic attribute doesn't come into spell defence but I think it is clear enough by the absence of mentioning Magic rating at all. This is mirrored in the example, which also does not mention using Magic (and you'd really expect it to if it were the case).

It makes sense too – the counterspelling magician is not performing an action or rolling a test themselves and the notion of rolling two attributes and a skill for a resistance test should sit uncomfortably with any right-minded player/GM IMHO.

It's a shame they didn't explain counterspelling better in fluff-terms. As it stands it's not at all clear what the counterspeller actually does to protect his allies or how it works in sorcery terms.

[Dakka Dakka]

Thanks Aerospider, that is exactly what I wanted to write.

Note in case of trying to disrupt a sustained spell, the mage indeed rolls MAG+Counterspelling. But Shielding, Shielding Foci and Absorption don't help.

[Blade]

There are too many magic skills to let you be incompetent in all of them with the 35BP cap.
And even if you only keep the least interesting ones, you can still be useful as a mage if played well.

Though maybe you can get something useless with an incompetent and aspected mage...

[Mäx]

SR4A page 185:

"When a protected character is targeted with a spell, she rolls Counterspelling dice in addition to the appropriate attribute (body or Willpower) for the resistance test."

They should really have stated clearly that the Magic attribute doesn't come into spell defence but I think it is clear enough by the absence of mentioning Magic rating at all. This is mirrored in the example, which also does not mention using Magic (and you'd really expect it to if it were the case).

Okey, that's my mistake then, which is funny as my last example post on an possible spell resistance dicepool of an initiate level 10 mage(40+ if your interested) i did use the rules correctly (IMG:style_emoticons/default/embarrassed.gif)
But one only needs a willpower of 4 for those pools to be correct for the full spell resistance pool (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Ascalaphus]

Mystic Adept (10BP)
Incompetent: Spellcasting, Ritual Spellcasting, Summoning, Binding, Enchanting (25BP) (You don't need to be incompetent at Astral Combat if you never buy the Astral Perception power. Or heck, you might actually want Astral Combat..)
Net gain: 15BP and Magic 1, and you're on your way to creating an interesting Anti-Mage.

[Yerameyahu]

Well, depending on what 'interesting' means. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Presumably, you're not allowed to take Mystic Adept at all if you're not actually going to *be* a Mystic Adept.

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, when I said "counterspelling prowess" I meant just his skill plus modifiers portion of the pool that he could apply to any counterspelling test and even lend to others. If you're talking about his own personal resistance pool the number would have been around a 15 or so because he had pretty standard human attributes other than his softcapped agility. That's not completely untouchable or anything, but it does take a pretty dang proficient magician to beat such pools when you factor in that background counts, cover and vision modifiers can hurt spellcasting while counterspelling isn't really affected by anything other than wound and disorientation penalties. And like I said, we didn't find things totally broken. We just thought that things were only going to get crazier the farther down the rabbit hole we went.

[Ascalaphus]

Well, depending on what 'interesting' means. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Presumably, you're not allowed to take Mystic Adept at all if you're not actually going to *be* a Mystic Adept.

Yeah, if the player tried to take Mystic Adept and Incompetence in all the relevant traits just to get free BP, I'd slap him. But if the point is to make an Anti-Mage character, I'd be inclined to allow it.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Like I said, this guy hit the streets with 15 dice without the benefit of a specialization or smartlink. A run or two in he was rocking 19 dice when using a smartlinked T-250 Defiance (we didn't run unwired so no tacnet) and was contributing around a dozen or so dice worth of Counterspelling prowess when defending against Combat Spells by the time we quit. He was a mage that lived by "geek the mage." Ultimately we kinda decided that in general we liked lower powered games than that.

Full disclosure: I'm not really trying to blame this on Awakened or even karma advancement, per se. The Muscle Toner 4 was at least as responsible for his effectiveness as the Shielding/Mentor/Focus stack was and he had that at chargen.

Wow...

Okay then...

[mmmkay]

Where exactly does it say that, counterspelling is after all linked to magic.
But if that's true then subract 4 from those pools.
Also there was supposed to be a mention in that post that those pools are for countering combatspells, but those are the ones you most often need protection from.

Breakdown:
Magic 4+ c ounterspelling 5 + shielding 3 + shielding foci 3 + spec 2 + mentor 2 = 19 dice
after one more iniation and bigging up absorption that becomes
Magic 4+ c ounterspelling 5 + shielding 4 + shielding foci 3 + spec 2 + mentor 2 + absorption 4 = 24 dice

Three things:

1) A question: Would you specialize your counterspelling skill in combat spells? If someone were to specialize their counterspelling combat spells seems to be the way to go.

2) A correction: Absorption does not add an additional initiate grade number of dice to your counterspelling pool. People should correct me if I'm wrong, but as I'm reading the rules it seems that absorption reduces the force of a cast spell by the hits on the spell resistance test up to the force of the spell. Then the absorbed force is stored for initiate grade turns until it is either used up as drain reduction or dealt as damage if unused before the time limit. Any absorbed force greater than the magic of the absorber is immediately dealt as 1 physical damage.

So clearly absorption does nothing to the spell resistance dice pool, but could perhaps save some damage if the spell is not resisted and the reduction in force of the spell exceeds the potential damage done by the absorption process. On the other hand it is possible to take more damage trying to absorb a spell than just shield the spell.

3) For completeness: As has already been stated including magic in the counterspelling pool is incorrect.

[Emy]

It's actually the kind of spellcaster I would like to play. I tend to have an aversion to spellcasting because of how convoluted all the systems are for casting spells (regardless of RPG). Then all the god damn record keeping with what spells you know or can know. Ugh.

Don't look at the Matrix rules, then. They're -much- worse about that than SR4A's (rather sane) spellcasting rules.

[Mäx]

1) A question: Would you specialize your counterspelling skill in combat spells? If someone were to specialize their counterspelling combat spells seems to be the way to go.

Yes, as those are the ones my character as a runner feel are most important to protect against.

2) A correction: Absorption does not add an additional initiate grade number of dice to your counterspelling pool. People should correct me if I'm wrong, but as I'm reading the rules it seems that absorption reduces the force of a cast spell by the hits on the spell resistance test up to the force of the spell. Then the absorbed force is stored for initiate grade turns until it is either used up as drain reduction or dealt as damage if unused before the time limit. Any absorbed force greater than the magic of the absorber is immediately dealt as 1 physical damage.

So clearly absorption does nothing to the spell resistance dice pool, but could perhaps save some damage if the spell is not resisted and the reduction in force of the spell exceeds the potential damage done by the absorption process. On the other hand it is possible to take more damage trying to absorb a spell than just shield the spell.

Absorption tells you to do the usual spell resistance test and add initiate grade as a dicepool modifier, so it does add initiate grade in additional dice.