[X] My Assistant

[Maelwys]

I realize that there's already a SR5 Magic thread (9 pages long) but the majority of it seems to have been done when few people had the books, and most were going on what they heard, rather than what they new, so I though I'd start a thread with what I've been looking at.

I wasn't much of a 4th edition player, but based on experience and discussions with 3rd and 4th, it seems Mages could use a little bit of a nerf bat with regards to say, stunbolt.

But does it sort of seem like they went too far in the other direction?

Drain is Force instead of Force/2. Okay. That's not too bad.
Drain can't be healed magically? I'm good with it, I thought it was silly in the first place.
Drain can't benefit from a medkit? That seems like you're taking it a step further and punishing them.

Aspected Magicians. What the heck happened here?
"Well sure. I can take a normal magician with slightly lower magic, or I can take an aspected magician, have an extra skill, but I lose out on 35 karma of spells or alchemical preparations and projecting. Let me think." sure, I know. Roleplay and not Rollplay. But you could roleplay being an aspected magician by playing a regular magician, that just doesn't take the other two skill groups.

Foci being built quicker seems like an okay idea to me. Except for some odd reason you can't use edge on the test (although on extended tests you can), you're not guaranteed to get the focus force that you want, and if you critical glitch, you don't lose a point of magic. You lose a point of ESSENCE. Really? Losing a point of Magic wasn't enough, you have to twist the knife just a little bit more?

Rituals. So. If I want to cast an illusion at a guy, I have to purchase one ritual. But if the spell I want to send is a combat spell, I have to purchase another ritual? Does this just sound like random karma drain at this point? I'm sort of okay with Watchers and Warding being, well, maybe not rituals, but something to spend karma on so you can do, but as rituals it seems bizarre. If I want to ward someone's house, I have to go there, spend hours setting up the ritual lodge, then spend hours performing the ritual? Or if I'm reading this right, I can perform the warding on an object, then take it to the location, and hope the object doesn't get kicked around or knocked about at the location (not to mention pissing people off by driving a ward with a 6 meter radius throughout town).

The Watcher is even more bizarre. What's the point of a Watcher at this time? Before its "Oh man, I suddenly need a quick messenger or something." In the era of commlinks, that seems less necessary, but even if you do need the watcher for communication, it still takes minutes to summon compared to the near instant of SR3 era. And that's only if you've spend the hours making the lodge first. You're SOL if this issue/need comes up when you're not at your lodge. And to top that off, I can summon a normal spirit as a Complex action. Why not use that if I need a spirit? What's the Watcher's purpose?

Not sold on Alchemical preparations. I kind of like the idea, but the fact that you have to purchase spells separately from what you can cast seems like its just been turned into a karma sink rather than a new ability.

So those ar emy thoughts. What am I missing, what am I not understanding, what am I taking out of context or just wrong about?

[Blade]

My biggest complain is about spirits. They didn't update the spirits, which were the most broken things about magic in SR4. They've only done a half-assed fix for spirit Edge, which wasn't much of a problem. And the Movement power is now even more broken that it ever was.

[IridiosDZ]

Drain can't benefit from a medkit? That seems like you're taking it a step further and punishing them.

Drain is a type of fatigue, not physical damage. (except for overcasting or whatever term for how 5e does it). Medkit's really aren't designed to 'heal' fatigue, only rest/sleep can do that.
Fatigue(drain) can be countered by drugs if you need an immediate pick me up, but the user will have to deal with the fall out later.

[Draco18s]

Drain can't be healed magically? I'm good with it, I thought it was silly in the first place.

Pretty sure you never could.

[Moirdryd]

I may mention the word Balance in this a bit. As anyone who's read my posts elsewhere will know I don;t often adhere to "game balance" as a perfect ideology. That said I do adhere to the concept of mechanical balance in a ruleset to allow people to have fun with their concepts and not feel utterly overshadowed and overpowered by the rest of the group.

I can get behind the loss of essence in a bad botch for Artifacing. Creating Items of Power (especially high force ones) should have a level of Risk involved and iirc SR3 was similarly dangerous in the making of the high powered stuff.

As for Rituals. Yes they are a bit karma sinky, but I can understand why and I like the fact that you have to learn a different Ritual for a different class of spell. In SR3 all we really needed was one skill and probably centering and that was it for Rituals, now there is a progression and ability aspect to them outside of that and I think it is one of the things that helps balance magic progression vs 'Ware, Tech or Matrix. Everything in the mage's versatility now comes with a choice that has to be made within that bracket.

Drain not being heal-able. Yeah I didn't understand it much either at first glance. But then I reasoned that if it's essentially the force of mana overloading your own Mystic System then I can see why a medkit wont do much about it nor other magics. It fits with the classical "cost" of magic in myth where that which you do to yourself can only be recovered by time. Again it also helps balance things down between Magic and Tech.

Now, RE the Watchers and Warding and so forth. The Hours for creating a Ritual Lodge can be utterly ignored with Reagents. One of the uses of reagents is to use Force in Drams to create a Temporary Ritual Lodge that takes Minutes X Force to set up and lasts 1 hour per Dram. Reagents are VERY useful things to have as a mage in SR5 and are a pretty cool way of having telesma in the game. reagents do a lot. So that makes warding easier and viable outside of the Lodge.

Watchers.... took me some time to work out too. Most of the time a Spirit seems better. However. Watchers exist at hours per hit on the roll, handy if you can roll well and don't want to mess around with Binding spirits given they have the sunset/sunrise thing. There are no Services for Watchers, they just do what you want them too for as long as they are around. Again that's better than a Summoned Spirit for rudimentary remote services, which make Watchers using their Search power REALLY good at what Watchers always used to be good for. Finding things. because there IS no remote service to a Watcher. Also, while they are not as quick as a complex action with Reagents watchers can be summoned pretty quickly still. The watcher Ritual is Force in minutes to do. So if you want a quick F6 Watcher and you have reagents it will take 12 minutes to get one.

Alchemy, yeah not massively sold on that either I think there should be some better trigger descriptions.

[Mäx]

Not sold on Alchemical preparations. I kind of like the idea, but the fact that you have to purchase spells separately from what you can cast seems like its just been turned into a karma sink rather than a new ability.

That depend on how you go about them, personally i was planning on building myssad alchemist with no actual spells just preparations.
Yeah their a karma sink if you try to be able to do everything, but if you look at it as a totally differend ability then it doesn't have to be.

Another way to go is to look at the list of spell and decide what you need as actual spell and what would be better as preparations, you mostly don't need something as both a spell and preparation.
For example increased reflexes might be better as preparation then spell, if you don't expect to get into more then 1 or 2 fights per run, as it circumvents a need for a high force health sustaining focus.

[HugeC]

Wow. Thanks for pointing out the artificing rules, they are just... I don't know what to say. Guess I will work on some house rules.

[Seidaku]

Foci being built quicker seems like an okay idea to me. Except for some odd reason you can't use edge on the test (although on extended tests you can), you're not guaranteed to get the focus force that you want, and if you critical glitch, you don't lose a point of magic. You lose a point of ESSENCE. Really? Losing a point of Magic wasn't enough, you have to twist the knife just a little bit more?

The focus creation rules seem more than a little goofy right now. Not only can you explicitly not spend Edge on the test for some reason, but by the RAW it is almost impossible to create a Force X focus using a Force X formula. Why? Consider:

To create the focus, you make a Artificing + Magic [formula Force] v. Formula Force + telesma’s Object Resistance test. Your net hits on this test determine the actual Force of the focus. Given that the formula Force is your Limit on the test, that means that no matter how well you roll, every hit on the opposed roll subtracts from the maximum Force of the focus. How bad is this? Let's run some numbers.

According to the Object Resistance chart on page 295, the lowest possible OR is 3 (for Natural Objects such as trees, unprocessed water, hand-carved wood, and so on). So, for a Force 1 formula (the "easiest" formula you can use) the opposed roll is 4 dice. Given that you have a Limit of 1, this means that if those 4 dice yield even a single hit, you fail. Crunching the numbers, this yields about a 19% success rate, assuming you always score at least one hit. Put differently, this means it takes about 5 tries to successfully create a Force 1 focus using a Force 1 formula. Given that it takes (formula Force) days per attempt, that's only about 5 days.

What about higher force formula? Let's assume we're trying to build a Force 6 focus with a Force 6 formula using a telesma with OR 3. Assuming we always roll as many hits as the formula Force Limit allows, this gives us a success rate of 2%. Put another way, it takes an average of 40 attempts to successfully create a Force 6 focus from a Force 6 formula. Given that it requires 6 days per attempt, this means it takes an average of 240 days to make the focus when rolling perfectly.

So far, we've been assuming that you roll as well as the Limit allows. What happens to the numbers if you don't? Let's start by taking a look at a mage who dabbles in artificing:

[ Spoiler ]

Non-specialist Enchanter
Magic: 6
Artificing: 4

Desired Focus Force: 1
Formula Force: 1
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 19.6%
Avg Attempts: 5.096
Avg Time To Create: 5.096 days

=======

Desired Focus Force: 6
Formula Force: 6
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 0.1983%
Avg Attempts: 509.048
Avg Time To Create: 3054.288 days

A non-specialist has a "reasonable" chance of making a Force 1 focus; almost 20%. Given that each attempt only takes a day, it's likely that within a week he or she will be successful. Making a Force 6 focus, on the other hand, is nigh impossible: with the chance of success being a fraction of a percent, it will take such a character an average of almost nine years to create the focus.

What about a specialist? Let's look at the highest pool we can reasonably achieve at character creation: 6 Magic, 7 Artificing (via Aptitude quality) and a specialty in focus creation.

[ Spoiler ]

Focus Creation Specialist
Magic: 6
Artificing: 9 (7 base with Aptitude, +2 from specialty: focus creation)

Desired Focus Force: 1
Formula Force: 1
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 19.6%
Avg Attempts: 5.096
Avg Time To Create: 5.096 days

=======

Desired Focus Force: 6
Formula Force: 6
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 1.028%
Avg Attempts: 97.21
Avg Time To Create: 583.26 days

Our specialist has the same chance as the non-specialist to create a Force 1 focus; the Limit of 1 plus the size of the opposing pool really makes this test a question of "do they roll a hit or not"- skill doesn't factor into it. This seems a bit counter intuitive. Shouldn't a character specializing in focus creation be better at making low force foci than one who "dabbles" at it?

More disturbing is the Force 6 stats: our "specialist" still has only a 1% chance of success, and still requires almost two years to succeed.

Alright; how about the absolute pinnacle of metahuman achievement: Magic 18 (Grade 6 initiate, Force 6 Power Focus), Artificing 15 (13 base w/Aptitude, +2 specialty)

[ Spoiler ]

Uber-Artificer
Magic: 18 (Grade 6 initiate, Force 6 Power Focus)
Artificing: 15 (13 base w/Aptitude, +2 specialty)

Desired Focus Force: 1
Formula Force: 1
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 19.6%
Avg Attempts: 5.096
Avg Time To Create: 5.096 days

=======

Desired Focus Force: 6
Formula Force: 6
Telesma OR: 3

Success Chance: 2.62%
Avg Attempts: 38.141
Avg Time To Create: 228.846 days

There you have it; even with stats well beyond the ken of mortal runners, the chance of making a Force 1 focus is no better than our "dabbler", and creating a Force 6 focus still requires the better part of a year.

Let's try another angle: maybe this behavior is intentional. What if the mechanics are designed to force you to use a formula with a higher Force than the focus you're trying to make? That might be a reasonable interpretation. Let's take a look at our uber-artificer again. He's still trying to make a Force 6 focus, but this time he's using higher Force formulae:

[ Spoiler ]

Uber-Artificer
Magic: 18 (Grade 6 initiate, Force 6 Power Focus)
Artificing: 15 (13 base w/Aptitude, +2 specialty)

Desired Focus Force: 6
Telesma OR: 3

=======

Formula Force: 7

Success Chance: 9.8%
Avg Attempts: 10.202
Avg Time To Create: 71.414 days

=======

Formula Force: 8

Success Chance: 17.43%
Avg Attempts: 5.702
Avg Time To Create: 45.896 days

=======

Formula Force: 9

Success Chance: 10.992%
Avg Attempts: 9.097
Avg Time To Create: 81.873 days

=======

Formula Force: 10

Success Chance: 5.04%
Avg Attempts: 19.841
Avg Time To Create: 198.41 days

Well, that's interesting. Increasing the formula Force helped.. to a point. A Force 8 formula gave our uber-enchanter a 17% chance of success, but upping the formula Force beyond that quickly caused the success chance to plunge. Counterintuitively, the best way for our uber-enchanter to make a Force 6 power focus is using a Force 8 formula. Not Force 7, not Force 9- Force 8. Even then, with a dice pool about as high as the game mechanics allow, he's looking at an average of 6 attempts and 45 days to succeed.

Perhaps these success rates and times are expected. To me, they seem counterintuitive at best, character concept ruining at worst. The focus creation rules are presented as though you could reasonably expect to make your own foci if you build your character to be good at it. The realities of the mechanics involved make this far from the truth.

[Draco18s]

The focus creation rules seem more than a little goofy right now. Not only can you explicitly not spend Edge on the test for some reason, but by the RAW it is almost impossible to create a Force X focus using a Force X formula. Why? Consider:

{Math!}

Lawl.

This is why every TTRPG needs a Statistics Guy.

[forgarn]

Why would a talismonger be running?? If you are building a character to be a specialist a creating foci, why would you be running when you know that each foci will require (formula force)days to complete? I guess I am looking at characters who have the time to run and crafting, ehh... nice sideline when/if I have time. The above is also why foci and the like cost so much to buy.

[Seidaku]

Why would a talismonger be running?? If you are building a character to be a specialist a creating foci, why would you be running when you know that each foci will require (formula force)days to complete? I guess I am looking at characters who have the time to run and crafting, ehh... nice sideline when/if I have time. The above is also why foci and the like cost so much to buy.

Then why bother with rules for crafting foci? That's the main problem, here. The rules are in the core book, right next to the rules for casting spells and using adept powers. A new player is going to read these rules, think "Oh, I can be Magician who specializes in Enchanting", and end up with a character who can't do the very thing he's supposed to be good at. If the intent behind the focus creation rules was to make crafting foci so difficult that it's best left to NPCs, they shouldn't have included them in the core rules. That kind of thing is perfect for a supplement, along with an appropriate disclaimer to warn off players from investing in it.

[forgarn]

Where I think you are going wrong is that you are trying to dictate the force of the foci you are making. If you are doing that, then you need to plan for it and use a higher rated formula. In addition, on pg. 306 it states:

The focus formula must be for a Force that is equal to or less than your Magic rating—you cannot make foci with ratings greater than your Magic rating.

If you are trying to make a for 6 focus with a force 6 formula, you have to hope that the focus gets no hits at all on the craft test. And those are pretty low odds. But even with your specialist example above, you are going to end up with a force 2 focus on average every time (15 dice for you = 5 avg hits; 9 dice for the focus on avg = 3 hits).

But it looks like you are complaining that a newly created character specifically designed to craft foci cannot create a force 6 focus and I would have to reply, you're damn straight! As is stated, artificing is not for the weak or untrained! Get your artificing, and magic up and use higher force formula so that you can increase the limit and you should be good.

Your specialist that has initiated and has a magic of 18 and an artificing of 15 would get a force 7 focus on average every time if they upped the force of the formula to an 11 instead of a 6.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Where I think you are going wrong is that you are trying to dictate the force of the foci you are making. If you are doing that, then you need to plan for it and use a higher rated formula. In addition, on pg. 306 it states:


If you are trying to make a for 6 focus with a force 6 formula, you have to hope that the focus gets no hits at all on the craft test. And those are pretty low odds. But even with your specialist example above, you are going to end up with a force 2 focus on average every time (15 dice for you = 5 avg hits; 9 dice for the focus on avg = 3 hits).

But it looks like you are complaining that a newly created character specifically designed to craft foci cannot create a force 6 focus and I would have to reply, you're damn straight! As is stated, artificing is not for the weak or untrained! Get your artificing, and magic up and use higher force formula so that you can increase the limit and you should be good.

Your specialist that has initiated and has a magic of 18 and an artificing of 15 would get a force 7 focus on average every time if they upped the force of the formula to an 11 instead of a 6.

Can you not expend reagents to increase your Limit (or reduce the Foci's resistance)? If that was the case, it would not be bad.

[Skynet]

You need to spend an equal amount to the maximum possible binding cost (i.e. a [formula rating]-focus of the type you are crafting) in drams of reagents. But no other benefits are mentioned. Those reagents are always spent, whether you complete the focus (i.e. spend karma on it) or not.

One possible solution would be using teamwork and other DP-boosts (specialised tools etc.) to create reasonable foci without being an uber-mage.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You need to spend an equal amount to the maximum possible binding cost (i.e. a [formula rating]-focus of the type you are crafting) in drams of reagents. But no other benefits are mentioned. Those reagents are always spent, whether you complete the focus (i.e. spend karma on it) or not.

Well that sucks... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Seidaku]

Where I think you are going wrong is that you are trying to dictate the force of the foci you are making. If you are doing that, then you need to plan for it and use a higher rated formula.

...

But it looks like you are complaining that a newly created character specifically designed to craft foci cannot create a force 6 focus and I would have to reply, you're damn straight! As is stated, artificing is not for the weak or untrained! Get your artificing, and magic up and use higher force formula so that you can increase the limit and you should be good.

Your specialist that has initiated and has a magic of 18 and an artificing of 15 would get a force 7 focus on average every time if they upped the force of the formula to an 11 instead of a 6.

Read my last example again. Your numbers are inaccurate. You're also misrepresenting my position by claiming that I am "complaining that a newly created character ... cannot create a force 6 focus." This is untrue. I provided benchmarks for three different characters attempting the same tasks, and discussed the results. The salient point is that none of those characters has a reasonable chance of success, which is not intuitive from reading the rules.

[kzt]

Perhaps these success rates and times are expected. To me, they seem counterintuitive at best, character concept ruining at worst. The focus creation rules are presented as though you could reasonably expect to make your own foci if you build your character to be good at it. The realities of the mechanics involved make this far from the truth.

Demonstrating once again why having people to who got freaked out by the idea of taking "probability and statistics for dummies" in charge of your game design process doesn't work out well.

[Epicedion]

I'm slightly more disappointed that Disenchanting a focus doesn't get you some reasonable benefit. At best it takes a huge amount of time and gives you a paltry number of free reagents, but not so many that you couldn't easily sell the focus for a single percent of its value and buy up many, many more reagents.

If you could channel the energy into the creation of a new focus, or at least get several dozen reagents for your trouble, I could see it, but for now it looks like time not well spent.

[Maelwys]

But it looks like you are complaining that a newly created character specifically designed to craft foci cannot create a force 6 focus and I would have to reply, you're damn straight! As is stated, artificing is not for the weak or untrained! Get your artificing, and magic up and use higher force formula so that you can increase the limit and you should be good.

In SR3, making foci was a long and arduous process depending on what you wanted to make. In SR4 I assume it was similar. In SR5 its designed to look like its possible for a runner to do it themselves without taking 54 years to do it. Got some extra cash and downtime of a week? Whip up that Focus whose formula you just bought from the talismonger (or created last month). Its only Force 3, so you only need 3 days off. You can handle that. If bug spirits invade your teammate's safehouse, he can deal with it for 3 days on his own, right?

But the actual rules are something else. You say that Seidaku is complaining that he can't make a Force 6 foci at character generation.

But its not just that.

Depending on how your GM handles it, you can't make a Force 1 Foci at character generation using a Force 1 formula. Why? Because to do this you're rolling against a pool of (atleast) 4 dice, which is probably going to get that 1 hit to negate your limited 1 hit. You're going to have to make plans for a higher force. 2 might do it, ubt you're hoping for a poor roll. 3 might be better.

And this is for something that's a piece of carved driftwood.

Want something with the level of complexity of say, a brick? Maybe a piece of leather? OR of 6. Want a rating 2 focus? Well, that pieces of leather can autobuy 2 successes (2+6), so don't bother with a Force 2 formula. Force 3 formula? That puts its dice pool at 9, so on average its going to roll 3 successes, so that's no good. Force 4 formula? 10 pool, still going to get on average 3 successes. Force 5 formula? 11 dice. Going to get 3 successes on average. Congrats. You made your force 2 focus. With a rating 5 formula. And that's only if the dice rolled slightly below average (and if you rolled 5 hits).

So to make your Force 2 Weapon Focus (Brick), you're looking at having to create a Force 5 Formula for it, and hope that you roll well enough to get 5 hits (don't forget, edge can't be used), and hope that the opposed test rolls slightly below average.

So it seems incredibly random to me.

Fortunately you can break down foci and recoup some of your reagent loss (not much, 1/3rd) and try again, but keep in mind that each time you try to create a foci, you run the risk of critical glitching, and losing an entire point of ESSENCE.

[Maelwys]

Watchers.... took me some time to work out too. Most of the time a Spirit seems better. However. Watchers exist at hours per hit on the roll, handy if you can roll well and don't want to mess around with Binding spirits given they have the sunset/sunrise thing. There are no Services for Watchers, they just do what you want them too for as long as they are around. Again that's better than a Summoned Spirit for rudimentary remote services, which make Watchers using their Search power REALLY good at what Watchers always used to be good for. Finding things. because there IS no remote service to a Watcher. Also, while they are not as quick as a complex action with Reagents watchers can be summoned pretty quickly still. The watcher Ritual is Force in minutes to do. So if you want a quick F6 Watcher and you have reagents it will take 12 minutes to get one.

Alchemy, yeah not massively sold on that either I think there should be some better trigger descriptions.

I had missed that reagents could set up a temporary lodge, but its still pretty time consuming. The Search function close to sunrise/sunset was about the only thing I could come up with as well.

Slightly better than I thought, but still sort of in the "Well. I could learn to summon a watcher. Or I could learn a new spell, or fund a good chunk of my next initiation or my next foci, or skill boost, or attribute boost..." category. Nice, but most likely way down on the list.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

So, just to clarify a bit... Now, in SR5, Object resistance is rolled in opposition, rather than it being a Threshold? Not really sure I like that either. Way too much swing in the results. Sheesh. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

[Draco18s]

Watchers have gotten less and less useful since 3rd. 3rd they were OMFGyes useful.

Their Search power was different than other spirits. In that it always succeeded, without fail. The determining factor was time. The only way for a watcher to fail to find something was if the time duration was greater than its remaining summon duration.

Other spirits had to roll dice and would (more often than not) just fail completely.

[Jaid]

as some have suggested, perhaps teamwork is the solution. each assistant who gets at least one hit on a test will add 1 to your limit. note that while there is a limit to how many dice can be added, there is no actual limit to how much your limit can increase (although at some point, extra assistants won't really provide meaningful assistance since you won't have the dice pool to benefit from it).

but anyways, that does change things dramatically. you can now start with a force 1 recipe, have 9-10 assistants, and reasonably expect a force 6 focus if your dice pool cooperates.

(mind you, it does say something in terms of usefulness to the PCs that i'm suggesting you have more assistants than the size of the typical shadowrunning team).

[forgarn]

Read my last example again. Your numbers are inaccurate. You're also misrepresenting my position by claiming that I am "complaining that a newly created character ... cannot create a force 6 focus." This is untrue. I provided benchmarks for three different characters attempting the same tasks, and discussed the results. The salient point is that none of those characters has a reasonable chance of success, which is not intuitive from reading the rules.

Actually no, if you reread my post it state "it looks like" meaning that is the way I read it. If it was not meant that way, then I misinterpreted it. Also if you think about it for a second, it would be improbable for anyone to assume that you can create a force X focus from a like force formula due to the fact that the formula force is the limit. You would need to get the max number of successes and have the focus get no successes at all for it to happen. A very slim chance for that to happen no matter what the experience of the character.

Please show me where my numbers are inaccurate. And carefully note that I state "on average" for everything. The average number of time you will get a 5 or 6 on a d6 is 1 in 3 or 1/3. So if I am rolling 3 dice, on average 1 of those dice will be a 5 or a 6. That is what I did for everything. Yes, I know that "on average" is never average and that some nights you can't miss and other nights you can't get 3 hits out of 35 dice, but the average is the average.

Another thing brought up was breaking down the focus for 1/3 the reagents recoup, but why? Why not just sell it? Market is (force * 3k to 18k). So your force 2 power focus is worth 36k and you sell it for 25% to 50% and you still come out ahead (with the exception of time).

[Finster]

Guys, this is really bad. The changes to Foci-building and Rituals is the last straw for me. I got the PDF for the rulebook, but I'm not going to be investing anything else into SR5 unless they do a complete rewrite. These aren't issues that can be errata'd. Nothing short of a major rewrite will fix all of the issues across all the different mechanics. Guess I'll wait for SR5.5. For now, I might just houserule SR4 thusly:

• Change drain to Force instead of Force/2.
• Direct combat spells do NetHits for damage instead of Force + NetHits.
• Nerf spirit Edge somehow.

With that, I've got everything from SR5 that I actually like as far as the magic rules are concerned.