[X] My Assistant

[Slithery D]

I feel slightly less bad about the difficulty of creating a Force 6 focus, but requiring a 24 dice pool is grim.

Now calculate how easy it is to create a Force 9 formula (extended test 81), even burning 6-8 points of Edge along the way. I'd assume that not only are Force 6 foci very rare, the few that are out there all look the same because they're based on the same handful of high Force foci that hot shit researchers managed to bash out with some freak luck.

[Ryu]

I feel slightly less bad about the difficulty of creating a Force 6 focus, but requiring a 24 dice pool is grim.

Now calculate how easy it is to create a Force 9 formula (extended test 81), even burning 6-8 points of Edge along the way. I'd assume that not only are Force 6 foci very rare, the few that are out there all look the same because they're based on the same handful of high Force foci that hot shit researchers managed to bash out with some freak luck.

You do not exactly require a dicepool of 24, that is "merely" an obtainable level in the game world.

Don´t forget about teamwork, getting a magical group or paid helpers and the Leadership skill is worth it.

Build your starting mage with Magic 6, Edge 3, Artificing 4 (+spec), power focus 4. With Leadership 4, two helpers should be able to provide limit+2/pool+4. That should be able to pull of the trick (at least F8).

[Shinobi Killfist]

Which is one of the things I hate about the new Background Count. It SHOULD affect Foci just as much as a Mage/Adept. I like that it is a double whammy in SR4A. BCG of 2, and you lose 2 magic, and all your foci lose 2 Magic as well. So, that Mage who relies upon his Foci can no longer rely upon them. If it is just a DP mod (like the proposed Errata in SR5), then that dynamic effectively goes away. I weep for the future. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/frown.gif)

All they have to do is clarify that every applicable source of the penalty stacks. So I'm casting a power bolt in a BGC 2 I'm at -2 dice, I'm also using a power focus 4 to supplement my spell now I'm at -4 dice.

[Slithery D]

How do you see Leadership mattering here? I only see the p. 142 Direct use, which is intended as a sort of inspirational pick-me-up before a skill test on their next Action Phase. I don't know that I'd allow it to help an ongoing multiday effort.

But the teamwork rules on p. 49 seem to work fine: plus one limit per assisting team member just using the same skill, no leadership required. The extra dice are just gravy, since the limit is the real killer here.

Incidentally, the leadership skill would be something nice to put on spotter working with a sniper.

[Slithery D]

Does anyone have suggestions for partially reversing the Counterspelling nerf? I like that you can team up on a mage to overwhelm his Counterspelling + Shielding, but only allowing the pool to refresh once per combat turn seems too harsh. I'm thinking it refreshes on your next action, which lets you go toe to toe with a guy who has the same number of multiple actions per turn, but you can still get curb stomped by three guys with one phase all casting at the beginning of the turn.

[DMiller]

<snip>
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.

Temporary Magical Lodge: You can create a temporary magical lodge by spending a number of drams of reagents equal to Force of the lodge. The lodge takes one hour per point of Force to create and thereafter lasts until sunrise or sunset, whichever comes first.

Until (if) this gets changed in errata, Watchers are not viable in the field. Fine for leg-work before you leave your hide-out but once you are in the field or on a long mission they are useless. A lot of the missions we tend to do are far and away from home, our one summoner will be using spirits for all his search needs from now on since watchers are nearly impossible to use once away from your lodge.

*Emphasis added by me.

[Maelwys]

Well, that certainly puts paid to watchers for most cases, doesn't it?

[Epicedion]

Until (if) this gets changed in errata, Watchers are not viable in the field. Fine for leg-work before you leave your hide-out but once you are in the field or on a long mission they are useless. A lot of the missions we tend to do are far and away from home, our one summoner will be using spirits for all his search needs from now on since watchers are nearly impossible to use once away from your lodge.

*Emphasis added by me.

Watchers can be used in the field if you just take 5 minutes to summon one before leaving the lodge. They last for a number of hours and are pretty efficient. Just don't decide you need one in the middle of a run.

[DMiller]

Spending 5 minutes before you leave for your mission works well, you’ll get on average a watcher with 6 dice in its pool to do most things and you’ll only have to resist 3DV of drain. Of course if you are away from your Lodge due to the mission requirements for more than a day or so, no watchers for you.

On the other hand, you can spend a complex action and summon an actual spirit. A Force 5 spirit of (anything in the book) has (or can have) the Search power. The spirit doesn’t require a Lodge to summon and will only roll 5 dice to oppose you leading to 1.66 DV of drain. The Force 5 spirit will have 10 (more or less) dice to complete any task that the Watcher could have done, and will be able to provide more options.

Watchers have never been the best choice for most things, but they were cheap, fast to summon and in groups could actually be useful in a pinch. After the abuse that they have seen in 5th edition, I doubt anyone will use them for anything more than flavor because they are simply not worth the effort. Everything a watcher can do a spirit can do faster and better with less drain.

Watcher
Pros:
Long duration
Unlimited services
Doesn’t count against total available spirits

Cons:
Requires lodge
Higher drain than similar force spirit
Lower stats than similar force spirit
Lower skills than similar force spirit

Spirit
Pros:
Lower drain than similar force watcher
No lodge required
Complex action to summon
Higher skills than watcher
Higher attributes than watcher
More powers and capability than watcher

Cons:
Max 1 unbound spirit at a time
Limited services
Lasts until sunrise/set

Overall in my opinion Watchers just don’t measure up any more. The really dumb little twits of SR4 were much more useful than the now poorly implemented Watchers of SR5. Changing one small item would drop them back into the realm of usability. Make the Watcher Ritual not require a Lodge. With everything else that has been done to them, this by itself would bring them back into usability. Other tweaks might make them better, but just removing the Lodge requirement would make them okay to use.

[Epicedion]

The biggest advantage Watchers have is that they can talk, so they can do the following, which a spirit can't do:

Go patrol the area around the facility entrance and if anyone that's not in this room right now enters, assense them and then come find me. Then tell me how many of them there are, what they're carrying, and if there are any magic users in the bunch.

[DMiller]

The biggest advantage Watchers have is that they can talk, so they can do the following, which a spirit can't do:

Go patrol the area around the facility entrance and if anyone that's not in this room right now enters, assense them and then come find me. Then tell me how many of them there are, what they're carrying, and if there are any magic users in the bunch.

Actually a Spirit can do that without even coming back... It has a mental link with the summoner and can simply report what it sees. Now it may not be able to come back and manifest and tell the Street Sam what it saw, but as long as it can notify the summoner, it's all good.

[Epicedion]

Actually a Spirit can do that without even coming back... It has a mental link with the summoner and can simply report what it sees. Now it may not be able to come back and manifest and tell the Street Sam what it saw, but as long as it can notify the summoner, it's all good.

Well, yeah, okay, it can go find and tell Bob the Troll instead. Getting a spirit to do that would require a number of remote services, which would require binding.

[DMiller]

Being a messanger is the only thing that a Watcher is better at than a spirit. The Spirit is faster to summon and cheaper to summon (both in physical cost and drain).

Isn't a comm-unit supposed to provide 2-way (or more) communication (without drain or needing a lodge)?

[phlapjack77]

The focus creation rules aren't bad, they're just weird and a little counter-intuitive. To actually create a F6 power focus you need to have:

1) A F10 formula (27,000 nuyen -- reusable) and an OR3 telesma (~4 hits)

I find this very weird, to put it kindly - if a player wants to create a F3 focus, why would they think they could use a F4 formula? The formula tells the mage how to create a F4 focus, not a F3 focus. It's supposed to be a very precise recipe - what with all the flavor text about different traditions and form/force/function and making "that specific focus".

You can hand-wave it a little bit, but it's still really, really counter-intuitive in my book.

[Korwin]

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.

In SR5 all Enchanter are Vamps? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Scyldemort]

I must be missing something, because I'm not seeing what you guys are seeing.

What I read is this, on page 307 of the 5th Edition core rulebook: Crafting a focus is Artificing + Magic [Formula Force] v. formula Force + telesma's Object Resistance, no edge allowed, net hits are the focus's Force. Takes a number of days equal to the Force in the focus formula. Seems like something easily accomplished if you're specced for it and have a week or two of downtime.

[Jaid]

I must be missing something, because I'm not seeing what you guys are seeing.

What I read is this, on page 307 of the 5th Edition core rulebook: Crafting a focus is Artificing + Magic [Formula Force] v. formula Force + telesma's Object Resistance, no edge allowed, net hits are the focus's Force. Takes a number of days equal to the Force in the focus formula. Seems like something easily accomplished if you're specced for it and have a week or two of downtime.

ok.

so take a force 6 focus formula and see how often you actually get a force 6 focus as the result.

[Slithery D]

It's easily accomplished if you have a moderately high formula, if you use an unprocessed telesma, if you have a decent dice pool, and if you only want a Force 1-2. If you want a Force 3-4 you need some luck and a highish end formula. If you want a Force 5-6, well. See preceding.

If you want a processed telesma with a high OR just shoot yourself in the head.

[Draco18s]

It's easily accomplished if you have a moderately high formula

i.e. you need the recipe for a Force 9 to get a Force 6.

Think about that for a second.

To get a 6 layer chocolate cake, you need to follow the recipe that makes 9 cherry pies.

[Vicar]

i.e. you need the recipe for a Force 9 to get a Force 6.

I think maybe, instead of thinking of it as a "Formula for [Force X] Focus", rather it is a "[Force X] Formula for Focus".

Subtle yet distinctive difference. Semantics and all that.

[phlapjack77]

I think maybe, instead of thinking of it as a "Formula for [Force X] Focus", rather it is a "[Force X] Formula for Focus".

Subtle yet distinctive difference. Semantics and all that.

That's not the description given in the rulebook though. The rulebook goes out of it's way to talk about how specific a formula is, how it's a very precise recipe and all that (plus how it's worked in SR4, can't remember previous versions).

Again, it's possible to wrap your mind around it, it's just that you shouldn't have to according to current and previous editions descriptions of formulas.

[HugeC]

Is a Force 9 focus formula even obtainable? You'd need 81 hits on an extended Arcana + Magic [Astral] test.

Assuming Magic 6, Arcana 6, Focus Design specialization, and average hits:

[ Spoiler ]

1st test @ 14 dice = 4.66 hits
2nd test @ 13 dice = 4.34 hits
3rd test @ 12 dice = 4 hits
4th test @ 11 dice = 3.66 hits
5th test @ 10 dice = 3.34 hits
6th test @ 9 dice = 3 hits
7th test @ 8 dice = 2.66 hits
8th test @ 7 dice = 2.34 hits
9th test @ 6 dice = 2 hits
10th test @ 5 dice = 1.66 hits
11th test @ 4 dice = 1.34 hits
12th test @ 3 dice = 1 hit
13th test @ 2 dice = 0.66 hits
14th test @ 1 die = 0.34 hits

Total hits: 35

So you'd need to get a little bit lucky for a Force 6 formula. You might be able to get there by using Edge. Of if you're an UberArcanist with 26 dice. Oooh, or if you've got like 12 mages working on it together; I bet an Arcana professor at Texas A&M&M with all of his grad students assisting him could make one.

[Scyldemort]

Oh. Right. So you need a specialist, likely with assistants helping her, to create a Force 6 focus successfully.
*ponders*
Probably helps to have a Power Focus. Probably *really* helps to have a Force 6 power focus.

... yo dawg, I heard you liked making focuses, so I made a focus that you have to make before you can effectively make a focus.

[Slithery D]

Assuming Magic 6, Arcana 6, Focus Design specialization, and average hits:

I assume they screwed this up, and still intend mundanes to be able to design formulas, so I'd use Logic instead of Magic since that's the linked ability in the Skills chapter. So your uber formula researchers have 9-11 Logic dice (assuming Cerebral Booster or a quickened Increase Logic) and 10-12 Arcana dice, plus speciality and Edge.

Yeah, to get seriously powerful formulas you'll need a team of badasses doing a teamwork test. I imagine a magical Manhattan Project trying to create a Force 12 formula.

[Scyldemort]

Why would you need a Force 9 focus? Isn't that just going to unnecessarily raise your difficulty and give dice to the opposing side of the roll? Wouldn't it be better to try to max out your dice for achieving a Force 6 focus, needing 3 fewer hits for yourself and giving the opposition 3 fewer dice to roll?

For that matter, why the assumption that every hit on the opposing side removes 1 from the maximum power of your artifact, when the actual rule is that your net hits are the power of the focus? Assume 9 dice on the opposing side (virgin telesma, force 6 focus). Average dice will give them 3 hits. If you can manipulate your dicepool such that you can gain 9 hits on the roll, would that not give you a reasonable shot at crafting your 6 force focus successfully?

Or is it Astral Limit that is the issue? Assuming you need an Astral limit higher than the fairly easy to achieve 8 at chargen, take a few levels of 'Focused Concentration' and hang an 'Increased Logic' spell on yourself, or quicken said spell, and your mental and astral limits will jump immediately. Alternately, you can take Indomitable at chargen. Three times. +1 limit each time.

[ Spoiler ]

The dicepool problem:
At chargen, let's say Magic 6, Enchanting 6. Let's further add a specialization in artificing, so you're throwing 14 dice base. Then bring in the assistants. Assume that you invested some points in contacts with the magical community, and you can call in favors to get people to help. Say you know a Talismonger, and he's willing to trade favors. "Help me with mine and I'll help you with yours," that sort of thing. Each assistant that scores at least one hit adds +1 to your limit, and every hit scored by an assistant adds +1 to your dice pool. If you start the game with a power focus purchased with nuyen, that will also help, though it gets into the whole "I need a power focus to craft a power focus" problem. As you start to throw resources (particularly assistants) at the problem, the difficulty becomes less daunting.