Overcasting Mage build, or How to compensate for a Min/Max'ing Genius Options

[Troyminator]

Hi All;

One of the players that I GM for is a Strategic/Tactical genius. He is a min/max'er beyond compare. He has built a mage that is centered around overcasting. I don't have a copy of his character sheet, but his favorite thing is to overcast a spell to kill everything he can. If he fails on the drain test, he uses his Logic+medkit rating to lessen/negate the Physical damage caused by it. On Pg. 252 of SR4A rule book it says "Each net hit over the threshhold reduces one box of damage". He has a high logic and a rating 6 medkit, so he is usually rolling (IIRC) 10 or 11 dice.

With his overcasting and the Manaballspell (his favorite), he has killed more grunts and moving targets than the other 4 characters put together. With (Force of Spell) + (net hits) he is regularly doing 11-13 boxes of damage and taking no boxes for overcasting (because of Logic + First Aid). I do resist with Willpower, but usually the NPC's have low Willpower or I roll crap.

I do not want to kill the character, but I do want him to be challenged. So far the mage has killed between 15-20 NPC's and the other four characters have killed 3 or 4 between the 4 of them. The mage's player has even said something along the lines of "Why would anyone ever want to play something other than a mage? They are very powerful and there are no drawbacks".

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance for your help

ps I appologise if this is incoherant. I'm writing this after having a couple beers after a long day.

pps Edited for clarity (I hope)

[Troyminator]

I noticed on pg 204 of SR4A it says, " As an optional rule, every net hit applied also increases the Drain DV of the spell by +1. For area effect spells, the highest net hits used applies to the DV". I am going to start using this. Any other thoughts?

[Mäx]

I noticed on pg 204 of SR4A it says, " As an optional rule, every net hit applied also increases the Drain DV of the spell by +1. For area effect spells, the highest net hits used applies to the DV". I am going to start using this. Any other thoughts?

Do pretty much anythink but use that epic turd of a rule.(there's a reason why it only an optional rule now)
If he allready always overcast, he just starts to overcast with a little higher force and not use any net hits to increase damage, or he keeps the force about the same but multicasts 2 spells, again not using any net hits for damage.

End result being no drop in damage and no extra drain.

[Makki]

background count, security mages and spirits with counterspelling, said optional rule.
Give him an Addiction(Overcasting) just as Hackers can get an Addiction(Hot sim), that's completely valid, as this char seems to need the kick. Addiction will eventually lead to burnout and essence loss.

And First Aid takes several combat turns to apply, don't give him time. Additionally, the Healing modifiers table should make sure there are not many dice to reach the threshold of 2 and get hit net hits on the first aid test.

[LurkerOutThere]

I do not want to kill the character, but I do want him to be challenged. So far the mage has killed between 15-20 NPC's and the other four characters have killed 3 or 4 between the 4 of them. The mage's player has even said something along the lines of "Why would anyone ever want to play something other than a mage? They are very powerful and there are no drawbacks".

He's pretty much right on this score, magic has always been very powerful in Shadowrun, 4th edition just removed most of the drawbacks it had:

Things to remember:
First aid takes a complex action and takes a number of combat turns to the amount of damage he wants to heal. So if he's casting, then starting to heal himselves feel freet o have a mook take a sniper shot at him mid healing to throw him out of his comfot zone.

Also remember that he can only heal a number of boxes equal to his medkit or skill rating max six and can only heal once per set of wounds. Also remember all the modifiers, he's a mage so that's a -2 right there, and performing it on himself nets another -1. Which kicks him down to 8, he's then got to beat a threshold of 2 and anythign above that is a box healed. Still doable but not as good as he'd probly like unless he's only dealing with one or two points.

Other things you can do to speed bump him:

Background count: Almost any place worth getting into in the 6th world should have some level of background count usually aspected towards the defenders or at least soemthign they've got to work around
Vision/Cover modifiers: Have the opposition use smoke and ruthineum polymers, what the mage can't see he can't cast spells on.
Wards: I've found wards placed in strategic locations (like guard checkpoints, security desks etc) can provide a great way to reduce the mages ability to run roughshod over security forces. They add the wards rating to resitance tests. Reflecting wards can also be fun in this regard.
Counterspelling: If your player is always using magic as a hammer it's time to give the opposition equal capabilities or at least some protection. Counterspelling mages or spirits with magical guard are a cheap and logical way for organizations to protect their people and stuff.

[KarmaInferno]

Is the character cleansing after uber-casting? Cos spirits are really good at finding folks if they leave a great big astral signature. And many mega-corps LOVE to get their hands on powerful mages.

Remember Medkits need refilling regularly. During downtime it's no big deal but in the middle of a firefight it could suck.

Background count is your friend. Don't use it TOO much, but he might not be so cocky if he has his magic rating plus the ratings of all his foci and spirits temporarily dropped from time to time.

Have situations where combat isn't the best option. How effective will the guy be if the mission requires that nobody sees the runner team?

Mana stun spells are really easy to resist drain for, which is why he keeps chucking them. Start throwing opponents at him that are immune to them. A well equipped drone can be a caster's wost nightmare, especially with that option from War that increases their object threshold. So not only is he having to chuck high-drain spells, he has to get like 8 hits just to begin to affect it, or he's chucking indirect spells which drones can be really well armored and geared to defend against.

Have you tried talking to the guy, to let him know that his play style is making things decidedly un-fun for the other players? I mean, I'm a huge min-maxer too, but at tables I don't 'pull out al the stops' unless it's clear the other players can keep up. Yeah, I have gigantic dice pools, but I try to match the power level I'm operating at in actual gameplay to be similar to the rest of the group. Discussing it over privately might help.




-k

[Manunancy]

Depending on the opposition,get some drones into the fray. They require a lot of hits to be affected by magic and his beloved mana spells won't cut any mustard there.

The others PCs should be able to handle them fine with guns, but mr Mojo wil be in trouble unlesss he goes mundane (the drain on indirect spells is brutal, and the threshold to affect drones means either xasting at high force (with the relevant drain) or taking time as hits are soaked in the treshold)

[PoliteMan]

If he's regularly overcasting, everyone is going to figure out pretty quickly that's he's the guy tossing the mondo fireballs. The threshold to notice someone casting a spell is (AFB) 6-Force.

And then they're all going to shoot him in the face...a lot. Until he's super-completely 100% dead.

When the conventional wisdom is "geek the mage first" you don't really want to be hanging that sign over you.

I would also second drones. Enough bullet spam to wreck him, enough magical immunities to give him trouble, and cheap enough that you can dispose of them.

[Neko Asakami]

Well, I would think that I would start with adding some NPCs with Counterspelling, both actively countering and using the passive "damage prevention" mode (Spell defense, pg 185 SR4A). After that, I'd work to design the encounters so he needs to be picky about his targets. Remember AOE spells hit ALL the targets in the area, friend or foe. If he drops a PC with his spell, even by accident, he will learn VERY quickly to not do it anymore. Also, tight hallways and closed doors are your friends. Physical barriers and line-of-sight issues can really mess up a caster, even with indirect spells.

Next thing is, I'd re-read that rule about healing damage. If you read carefully, that's an extended test with an interval of 1 DAY for physical damage, which anything overcast will be. He needs to rest and relax for the whole time for any actual healing to take place, in addition to the actions it takes up in combat (as the other have pointed out). Enforce that if he decides to get up and start overcasting again right after healing, it undoes all of the work he's previously done.

Last thing is talk to him out of game and let him know that you think it's an issue. He may not have even realized it was a problem. However, if he insists on still being a jerk, have a talk with the other players and get their opinions too. They might be okay with it, but if they aren't have them say something to the player. If one person says it, it's easy to ignore, but if your whole play group says it, it might sink in.

If you wanted to be mean, you could always toss in a few nasty NPCs that cater specifically to his style of threat. Make it clear he's earning a rep for blindly killing all the targets in an area. NPCs will fight harder if they know they can expect no mercy. Have a corp he's pissed off hire a special runner team to hunt him down and make an example of him. A good (but admittedly cheesy) way to do it is have a Mystic Adept who specializes in Martial Arts and Counterspelling. My wife plays one very effectively in my game, specifically as a mage hunter. She actively counterspells on the way in, has the team's dedicated mage use spell defense to back her up, and then messes him up with physical combat. And you damn well better believe Mage Hunters exist. Oh, and my wife just suggested invisible opponents. Yes, they get hit by AoE spells, but they can sneak up on him from behind with no real problems and shank him in the kidneys since he's too busy casting to bother listening/astrally perceiving for other threats.

And if all else fails, sniper with a .50 cal at half a klick, paid for by a victim's family.

[LurkerOutThere]

Troy's problem sounds like he wants a way to control the character without outight killing him, unfortunately that's the world normal response to these one man massacres. They should shoot them dead quickly, there really is no good non-lethal defense against mages. GEEK THE MAGE FIRST is your best option.

The happy suppliment though is if the character survives his first exposure to this he'll have an incentive to keep his head down.

[LurkerOutThere]

Next thing is, I'd re-read that rule about healing damage. If you read carefully, that's an extended test with an interval of 1 DAY for physical damage, which anything overcast will be. He needs to rest and relax for the whole time for any actual healing to take place, in addition to the actions it takes up in combat (as the other have pointed out). Enforce that if he decides to get up and start overcasting again right after healing, it undoes all of the work he's previously done.

That is for natural healing, he's using first aid.

Honestly the best option may be one we used, we just ruled that fading/drain damage can't be first aided alternatively you might just apply this to overcasting. It seems to curb some of the more spectacular excesses. I would make sure you talk to the character before you impose this.

[Glyph]

It sounds like the major cheese-enabling factor is the combination of overcasting and first aid. i would either rule that you can't use first aid on physical Drain, raise the Drain for overcasting, or both (but I agree with Mäx that the optional rule from SR4 is one of the worst-conceived ones out there - and it actually encourages overcasting, rather than discouraging it). Overcasting is supposed to be a desperate tactic - it should not be something the mage does as a matter of course. If he whines, tell him that optimizing a character or using good tactics is one thing, but exploiting a rules loophole is another, and that GMs have the right to close rules loopholes as they become apparent.

But fix the problem area itself - I would recommend against overusing background count or counterspelling (they should both show up occasionally, but not all the time). Remember that old-fashioned visual cover messes up direct combat spells. Also, keep mooks from clustering up together - there is no reason for them to be in a huddle where one spell can take out a group of them.

[Cain]

I have to second drones. They're completely immune to manaball and stunball, the most easily cheesed combat spells in the game.

And since you're worried about the other players, focus on them. You've probably got a street sam in your group, he should be normally beating the mage at initiative; speed kills in Shadowrun, and SR4.5 is no exception. If he doesn't know about it, point him at the rules for area bursts and let him go wild; he can mow down a room before the mage gets to move. You should also have a face and decker as well; the mage has to sit out while the face talks and the decker does matrix stuff.

[LurkerOutThere]

Mage takes improved reflexes=Mage going as fast as a street sam.

[Neko Asakami]

Ah, Lurker you're right. I didn't even notice I did that. I've already house ruled that drain can't be healed through first aid, but completely forgot about the actual first aid rules. Chalk it up to it being tired and I'm late, okay? ^_^

Edit: Is he actually using the first aid skill or just defaulting with logic + medkit? Isn't there a penalty for that as well? I'm too tired to look into it, but will toss it out for some of the rules gurus to hash out.

Edit 2: Nevermind found it. It actually replaces the skill? Honestly, that's kinda crap. Why would anyone want to take the skill at all then?

[onlyghostdancesw...]

tbh although the geek the mage first credo is valid, as a fellow GM I would also say it is rarely necessary to outright use the .50cal sniper from over the horizon train from GM railroad &co.

The points on vision mods and security design are really really easy to deal out a power balancer to super mages/adepts/any characters trying to make shadowrun into (insert macro-archetype)-run.

Basic security design will take into account magic; after all it HAS been around for 6 decades and the biggest corps all dabble in it to different degrees.

Corps will use cheap alternatives to flying lead in sensitive facilities as a go to generic method in all their facilities, not just the most impressive ones.

Personal Favs include but aren't limited too:

Gas/smoke/ nasty virus emitters in hallways and along secured and sectioned off areas of the facility -

that Horizon facility which may not be as lethal as MCT will def have neurostun and IR smoke deployment capabilities; possibly even something more creative like positive drugs etc. MCT may just skip to ringu and all that good stuff but thats on the extreme.

Mage-sight fiber optics integrated into the entire facility inside and out - 1 mage can do scary stuff with that, course its also a weakness that the runners could exploit if they found it.

Physical Barriers to entry/ vision or the like - if you have them in a sensitive area such as a microtronics or biohazard facility, getting into gear that the runners would require to pass the human sized autoclaves could totally block out or really hamper vision (seeing as most corps will need to have sophisticated diagnostics systems and may as well just incorporate that into the biohazard suit facemask... gl getting a default glass one when the better ones are so cheap).

As well you can build corridors etc to have VERY short LOS or at least natural LOS, it would be an advantage to the corp to have everything over distance be augmented viewing for just this reason and fairly cheap, especially in a place like horizon where most of the stuff would be AR anyways. Put enough blind corners in there and the mage will be forced to toss his aoe's really fragging close to home, most likely on himself when the ranges go from 50ft down to maybe 5-10 if that.

Another good thing if you are interested in magical stuff as career advancement; this guy sounds like he might also be lootastic... just let him go into that magical R&D facility owned by SK or Azzies... forget to tell him about all the FAB research that has been going on in there, and that they might've had an accident or two on site just before the team got on site.

If he really asks for it; give him access to a really nice trove of foci, he may start using power foci etc as they are sweet... just forget to mention the imp inside them, that'll track him down hardcore and is more storyline appropriate than putting in the addiction imo.

Last but not least, throw tons of stun and/or DMSO equipped guards at him, sooner or later he'll collapse under the stress and then gets to go on trial for massive magical disruptions.

[Cain]

Mage takes improved reflexes=Mage going as fast as a street sam.

Not quite. He'll have as many IP's, assuming he casts the spell and can afford a F4 sustaining focus; but he should still have a lower initiative *score*. The street sam should have more modifiers to initiative and Reaction, which means he should be going first.

[UmaroVI]

Aside from variants of "herp derp rocks fall mage dies,"

1) Odds are that this problem has as much if not more to do with how the other characters are built than how the mage is built. Mages ARE good, but one thing that contributes to people thinking they are better than everyone else is that it's much easier to build a good mage than to build a good street samurai. Take a look at the other characters as well. If everyone is building good characters, the balance you tend to hit is that a combat-focused mage has less defenses and less Initiative, as many or more IPs, weaker single-target attacks, and vastly better AE attacks than a street samurai. If this isn't true, the easiest way to fix it might be to throw more money at the PCs; mages can use money, but not as much as street samurai.

2) Background counts weaken mages but don't overuse them. If you have every single adventure have a shoehorned-in background count, or start with nonsense like "The entire city has an un-Cleansable background count 1 because GRIMDARK," it isn't good.

3) Stuff that it's more OK to use a lot because it's simply sensible tactics:
a) Wards in inconvenient locations. The point of wards is not to stop mages; it's to make them turn their foci off to go through the ward. A solid high-force ward right after a door with security forces right behind it is a good setup.
b) Opponents that spread themselves out! This is the big one, because where mages are and always will be flat-out better than Street Samurai at fighting is AE. Similarly, enemies that get in close and thus can't be safely AE'd.

4) Drones and vehicles are harder for mages to hurt than living opponents.

5) Spirits with Magical Guard can make living opponents less pushover.

[Irion]

Well, froum what I read, he ain't the god of minmaxing. Your are just not the dick a GM has to be. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Lets start with overcasting: How many points of damage does he usally take? (The drain for manaspells is RAW too low. As there are several other points with spells, which I just do not get. Anyway, moving on)

The healing test:
There are rather nice modifiers for that:
So he is healing himself in or shortly after a fight, lets go:
Condition: Bad (combat, bad weather, swamp) -3
Patient is magician -2
Does he have implants, there are other mali just waiting here.
Then there are of course the wound modifiers also factoring in.
Feel free to be a dick and add some mali for treating himself.

So thats 5 dices less from the start.
He also needs two hits, translating into 6 dices.
Meaning he needs more than 11 dices to have a fair shot at one box healed. (Thats not that easy.)

And now the best part: If he fails to heal the drain compleatly, the trick is done for, until the drain has healed naturally. (Stupid rules)

[Aerospider]

And now the best part: If he fails to heal the drain compleatly, the trick is done for, until the drain has healed naturally. (Stupid rules)

Are you sure?

My understanding is that first aid is limited to once for each set of wounds. So if he takes 6 damage, wipes 5 off with first aid and then suffers another 2 later on he can use first aid again but will be limited to 2 hits since he has already tried first aid on the other box.

[Irion]

@Aerospider
Well, it is both drain. I mean sure, a bullet in the butt is not the same injury as a bullet in the face. But well, drain is always some kind of brain injury, as far as I know...

The rules are silly and non functional to begin with...

[TheOOB]

And yet guns are still a more reliable way of killing people.

Anyways, remember that first aid requires time to do, some room to set up, and it's the most quiet or stealthyest thing in the world to do, so during the heat of many runs it may be unefficient if not impossible. Also add in that medkits run out of materials over time, and unsanitary conditions can add penalties to the check, and it's not as perfect as you might think.

Also remember that if your other runners are using assault rifles with autofire correctly, they are also doing double digit damage and not risking damage to do so. When the mage overcasts and takes drain, he is vulnerable until he can heal.

[Blade]

Irion has it right with the modifiers to the healing test.
Also consider that a rating 6 medkit is probably a rather heavy suitcase (in previous editions, IIRC it weighed 6kg (or was it an houserule?)). A character with low strength might have trouble carrying it during a whole run.

Once he gets wounds he's unable to heal, it'll start going downhill for him, with less dice to cast his spells, and still less dice to heal the drain.

Feel free to also use houserule on overcasting drain. I personally houseruled that the drain of overcasted spell is based on force instead of force/2. It makes overcasting a bit more dangerous (especially when you have mages who don't care because they nearly always resist the drain).

[KarmaInferno]

Are you sure?

My understanding is that first aid is limited to once for each set of wounds. So if he takes 6 damage, wipes 5 off with first aid and then suffers another 2 later on he can use first aid again but will be limited to 2 hits since he has already tried first aid on the other box.

Depends on what you consider "each set of wounds".

Is it the simple act of being wounded, or is it the actual boxes of damage?




-k

[Dakka Dakka]

@Aerospider
Well, it is both drain. I mean sure, a bullet in the butt is not the same injury as a bullet in the face. But well, drain is always some kind of brain injury, as far as I know...

There is no mention that drain damage physical or otherwise must be a brain injury. Actually it can't even be one. Brain injuries don't heal on their own, which damage from drain does.
Even if drain damage were a brain injury, the damage from two castings still wouldn't be the same brain injury (i.e. set of wounds)

@First Aid: Don't forget that being in combat is -3 to the test. Since he is a magician he gets another -2, if he has 'ware there is an additional penalty based on lost essence. Also any dice pool modifiers from wounds also apply to this test, since he is helaing himself. So with 11 dice including the medkit, and a minimum of -5 dice, I doubt that he will often get the 3 required hits to heal the first box of damage. Maybe you should look more closely at what he is rolling.