[SR5] Direct combat spells and Errata Options

[Jaid]

how are you doing similar damage to yourself to harm them? what force are you casting your direct combat spells at, exactly, that you can't soak the drain on a spell that realistically has no business going above a force of about 5-6 unless you have a truly ridiculous amount of karma under your belt to actually need the higher limit?

and the main problem with magicians is that, right out of chargen, they can have all of the dice pool they need to be effective. from the very instant they're created. oh, they can get better at it, but that's just gravy. you can start off with a powerful focus, your key skills at a high value (perhaps not every one maxed out that you'd like, but that's everyone), and an excellent magic attribute. where this becomes a problem is just how much of that immediately becomes applicable to any new spell they acquire.

a combat magician might throw 16-18 dice on combat spells... and probably throws 14-16 dice on every other type of spell, also. which means that the mage focused heavily on combat needs to spend only 5 karma to pick up influence and is suddenly as useful as a powerful face as well in many circumstances, while the street samurai needs to invest in a completely different attribute from the main focus and pick up half a dozen skills to accomplish the same feat. *that* is where the power comes in. a simple 5 karma investment takes you from 0% effectiveness in many fields to being close to as good as an expert in those fields. magicians have bad initiative? 5 karma later, your magician can actually have pretty good initiative, all it takes is learning the right spell and using it. your perception is not so good? 5 karma later you can spot enemies from hundreds of meters away through walls or when they're blending in with a crowd.

whatever you do as a magician, it is very likely that by simply spending an additional 5 karma, a sizable portion of the investment you made towards doing your main focus can be applied to a secondary focus. this is less of a problem for adepts, i'll admit (in fact, i'm quite happy with the current situation between pure adepts and pure street samurai, although augmented adepts i think may pose a slight problem in being able to make better use of all available resources... but overall, it's close enough that you're not losing a lot generally speaking between choosing one route or the other).

it works out to be not too bad in chargen, because the current increased cost of that core (magic + spellcasting is generally more expensive to get high in chargen than agility + pistols or automatics) combined with a limit to your maximum number of spells at chargen keeps things fairly even. there's a high core cost combined with, for lack of a better way to describe it, a low cost for add-on modules, and in chargen with a fixed amount of available resources it isn't too big of a deal. but when you extend that out, the ability to quickly add on more and more modules means that your core, which was previously designed to be expensive enough to balance out those low-cost modules, can now be applied to far more modules, and the cost suddenly becomes comparatively a lot lower.

[RHat]

which means that the mage focused heavily on combat needs to spend only 5 karma to pick up influence and is suddenly as useful as a powerful face as well in many circumstances

To be fair, influence is shit for anything but the absolute shortest of cons. Often stuff where the street sam could have achieved the same result by knocking the guy out.

[Jaid]

To be fair, influence is shit for anything but the absolute shortest of cons. Often stuff where the street sam could have achieved the same result by knocking the guy out.

different range, different defences, and if the suggestion is subtle enough the target (as well as everyone around the target) may never even realize anything unusual ever happened. [sarcasm] oh yeah, clearly interchangeable. [/sarcasm]

there's a lot of difference between persuading the guard that he doesn't need to give you that annoying random in-depth check on your credentials on a busy day, and punching him out right in front of anyone who happens to be looking at all, such as a fellow guard at the same checkpoint.

edit: and even if there wasn't much of a difference in usefulness, that's still 5 karma for the magician vs what the street sam is investing into strength to deal enough damage to KO the target plus the unarmed skill needed to reliably succeed at the task (we'll assume the agility is part of the street sam's core ability, which i suspect most people consider to be shooting people).

[RHat]

different range, different defences, and if the suggestion is subtle enough the target (as well as everyone around the target) may never even realize anything unusual ever happened. [sarcasm] oh yeah, clearly interchangeable. [/sarcasm]

there's a lot of difference between persuading the guard that he doesn't need to give you that annoying random in-depth check on your credentials on a busy day, and punching him out right in front of anyone who happens to be looking at all, such as a fellow guard at the same checkpoint.

edit: and even if there wasn't much of a difference in usefulness, that's still 5 karma for the magician vs what the street sam is investing into strength to deal enough damage to KO the target plus the unarmed skill needed to reliably succeed at the task (we'll assume the agility is part of the street sam's core ability, which i suspect most people consider to be shooting people).

And you better hope that no one (target included) manages to make the perception test to notice your casting, as their resistance rolls would end the spell prematurely. And given that it's opposed by two attributes, it's gonna take a few hits to be successful.

Spells aren't THAT subtle, and Influence is more limited than you seem to think.

[tjn]

And if mages needs to resort to guns to be effective in combat, I can pretty much guarantee my group is going to demand to go back to 3rd Ed.

That depends on what one considers "effective," but it's an interesting comparison thought prompt.

A mage can sling 16 dice* for a single target elemental attack at force 6, every round, and never take drain (unless the GM is being pissy and refuses to allow buying hits on a drain test). The defender gets a Rea+Int test, add four dice for good cover (full cover is a lot more complicated, so I'll leave to someone else) which means, assuming a high average attribute of 4, that's 16 dice to 12 and the mage has a good chance to hit. However if the defender has a good Wil and goes defensive, if there are heavy uncompensated vision modifiers (note: you can now use electronic vision mods with indirect spells to help ameliorate that), or the target has decent counterspelling assistance, there's a very good chance of missing altogether. Assuming the ubiquitous armor jacket and you're looking at maybe 7 damage vs 10 dice to soak for maybe 4 damage a round against my expectation of a decent security mook.

I've always tended to lean towards the Ares Alpha (DV 11, AP -6 (APDS)) for my gun of choice ever since it was introduced. A good sammie can hit 18, maybe 20, dice to shoot and recoil compensation can easily clear 6 to allow recoilless Burst Fire. I'll use the same defense actions as above, but burst fire gives -2 dice to the defending roll. The Alpha also has to worry about range modifiers, which the spell doesn't, but a traditional shadowrun is far more CQB than battlefield engagements, so I'd leave range at short. So 18 dice to 10 dice to dodge. Expect 3 roughly net successes, so 14 DV against 10 dice to soak. So maybe 11 damage every round against that same security mook. Then again, if you're using an Alpha in SR5, you're more likely to abuse suppressive fire+grenades for maximum carnage.

Maybe something a little more everyday, so I'll go through the same thought process for a Steyr TMP. It is the most concealable FA gun and thus good for an everyday side arm in situations you can't walk around with your Alpha hanging out. So, DV 7, -4 AP (APDS again), and with a 4 Str and a Gas Vent 3, you hit the magic recoil compensation number again for burst fire. So 16 dice (since using the same sammie that spec'ed in the Alpha- two less dice) against that same security mook, under the same conditions gets maybe two net successes for 9 DV against 12 dice to soak. Maybe 5 damage every round. Similar damage to the spell but less likely to miss and the sammie has a lot more simple actions for positioning/reloads/communication/etc. Given a mage could also let lose a spirit before starting with the combat spells, I'd declare it "close enough."

Back of the envelope math for Pistols shows an expected 6 damage a round for a Ruger, but with a higher likelihood of missing without that mod from burst fire. Hrm, again in a similar ball park to spells, but just barely.

However when doing the same thing with a sniper rifle, the Desert Strike (available at chargen) averages roughly 11 damage every turn but is more likely to miss than the assault rifle. Also they have obvious range of engagement issues (I don't care if there's no rules against it, no one should take a sniper rifle into a CQB unless it has a bayonet). Shotguns... I've already done too much math in my head to deal with flechette, so, using the Enfield AS-7 (which you can finagle to shoot BF every round as well), I can expect roughly 12 damage every round. Both are similar to the Alpha (if not cheesing suppressive fire+grenades). Hrm.

Okay, so there is a definite divide in killing potential: Assault Rifles and Long Arms can reliably put down one decent security mook on most initiative passes, and everything else is maybe half as effective. I can see that as being some form of intentional balance if the game is under the assumption that carrying around a rifle of some sort will grab the attention of everyone around you but things like carrying a pistol are more socially acceptable. Dunno if that's intentional, and I don't know if I like a force 6 magic spell being less effective than a pistol. I might nix the ability to take good or partial cover against spells and the ability to use full defense against spells under the rationalization that if you can see them, you can hit them (vision mods would apply as normal and taking full cover prevents casting at all). It'd make a dedicated combat mage very likely to hit without counterspelling back up (which I'd like as it helps push the whole teamwork thing) but they won't hit hard hard enough to one shot anyone unless they push the force relatively high and gamble with a lot of physical drain on the line.

Thanks for the thought prompt Lurker.

*The power focus is really nice, but I have a hard time putting Resources higher than E.

[tjn]

magicians have bad initiative? 5 karma later, your magician can actually have pretty good initiative, all it takes is learning the right spell and using it.

While you have something of a point, this specifically makes me recall a player I used to game with, who kinda thought like you, in that magicians were awesomesauce on toast. He believed could just buff himself to be better than any other PC, just by adding the right spell.

Because he relied on this spell for initiative, he, ironically, almost never got to do anything in combat. This was in 3rd (but would have been even worse in 4th), but he couldn't roll high enough to get two passes without that spell. On the first combat turn, he'd have to cast that spell, and by the time it came around to roll initiative again, the actual sammie had gone so many times already, that combat was mostly a forgone conclusion. Then he attempted to always have it up, so he didn't have to waste his first turn while the sammie was doing everything.

This worked out in the normal world when having to deal with random gangers and that sort, but, at least in our game, wards are the cheapest magic security available. Most every business north of a Stuffer Shack has at least a ward across it's doorway, set to a contact security if it breaks. Yes he could break it easily, but doing so would alert security when all he wanted was to get his drink on at the club. So he got in the habit of dumping it and recasting once through. This habit then actually knocked him out in the middle of a run and he almost always had a penalty due to the accumulated drain. He still persisted, over the griping of the rest of the team, until he figured out that he also gave away the team twice on an infiltration mission when a watcher spirit spotted an active magical aura and reported the aura's position.

He got so pissed that his "unbeatable" plan to be more awesome than any other PC didn't work out, that he yelled at the GM and that was the last session he came back for. The next session the group elected to have his character jump on a grenade to heroically save the rest of us, and the GM's response was classic... "at least he's finally useful."

[Draco18s]

This worked out in the normal world when having to deal with random gangers and that sort, but, at least in our game, wards are the cheapest magic security available. Most every business north of a Stuffer Shack has at least a ward across it's doorway, set to a contact security if it breaks.

This strikes me as the same kind of GM dickery as this D&D game I was not in:

A friend of mine built a barbarianish character who picked up sunder feats galore. I don't remember the exact nature of how he got to the "cool aid man through walls" but he could. Charging may have been involved. I recall that someone heavily focused on Bull Rush.

PCs wander into a tiny little hamlet in the middle of nowhere, are immediately assaulted by a pair of Immovable Monks. As in, "immune to bull rush" kind of immovable. That dealt with, they get to the buildings proper. "I walk through the wall of the nearest building and pester the locals about what's going on." (Because low int and the ability to ignore concrete make for amusing situations). GM: "Oh, you can't. The wall has a wall of force on it. So does every other wall on every other building."

Later they get into a tower were the plot is going on and rather than fight monsters to get to the stairs the player tries his walk-through-walls ability again, this time on the ceiling. Nope, wall of force. Ditto the floor.

[Chinane]

Most every business north of a Stuffer Shack has at least a ward across it's doorway, set to a contact security if it breaks.

You mean set to alert the creator who then contacts security?
Might be a working business model, but considering what you're paying these days for the IT equivalent - and magic being somewhat rare - I could see that bankrupting businesses soon. Plus there being trust/diligence issues.

I'm not sure if there's a maximum on the number of wards a single mage can create, if so that would certainly be a factor (if someone can point me to the rule i's be grateful, btw.).

Also, a FAIR GM would probably have advised said player, that aura masking allows to pass wards undetected via an opposed test.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

I'm sorry, but given that indirect spells are still an effective option (and indirect area spells, like grenades, are too effective), I don't see how this is relevant. As for Direct Spells, keep in mind that the Drain/Damage comparison doesn't actually work like that. At F-3, Force 5 is basically your minimum Force that it makes sense to cast it at (as that entails the minimum 2 Drain). If you have Magic 6, Spellcasting 6, a Combat specialization, a Mentor Spirit bonus to Combat Spells, and a Force 3 Power Focus, that's 19 dice at chargen for at least 5 hits 81 percent of the time, and with a Drain pool of 11 you take no Drain 92.5 percent of the time. The target resists with Willpower alone, and cannot dodge - leading to at least 3 damage after soak most of the time (not bothering with a formula applying the limit right now). That's pretty reliable damage, and is pretty good if the target is otherwise very difficult for anyone to damage. It's a damn useful niche, even if it isn't as flashy as some others.

Also, the Drain on Directs hasn't really been increased - Drain scaling is different, yes, but at Force 6, the drain for Manabolt and such is identical.

And yet, any Additional Dice from Couterspelling reduces your "amazing" success of less damage than a pistol to possibly nothing. Which seems to be discounted in these discussions.

[Draco18s]

And yet, any Additional Dice from Couterspelling reduces your "amazing" success of less damage than a pistol to possibly nothing. Which seems to be discounted in these discussions.

Let me show you a magic trick Mom showed me when you weren't around.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Also, a FAIR GM would probably have advised said player, that aura masking allows to pass wards undetected via an opposed test.

You mean ONCE the Infiltrator has actually Assensed the Aura of the Ward's Creator. Can't pass a Ward using Masking without that particular bit of information.

[Ard3]

I'm not sure if there's a maximum on the number of wards a single mage can create, if so that would certainly be a factor (if someone can point me to the rule i's be grateful, btw.).

There is no upper limitation as such, but setting up wards takes time and area they cover isnt that large. It is 50 cubic meter times the sum of magic rating of participants of the ritual.

Lest say Wally the Wagemage sets up a ward. It is his main job so lets say 4 magic + 4 skill + specialization 2 + (corp loaned) focus 2 = 12 die pool. Willpower of 4 and drainstat 4.
Lodge is needed so he sets up temporary one. Rating 4, taking Force hours and 4 drams of reagents. Then lunchbreak and he starts casting. Ward ritual takes Force hours and Force drams of reagents, he chooses Force equal to his Magic. After 4 hours he rolls 12 die with Force as limit vs 2xForce.
12 vs 8, 4 vs 2.66 hits on average. He takes 2x2.66 = 5.33 drain. Ouch. The ward covers 50*4 = 200 cubic meters and lasts net hit weeks, 1.33 in this case. Assuming 2.5 m room height that is 80 square meters of space. For a business place that is not that much.
Wally sleeps of the drain and continues on the following day until the whole area is covered. After about a week he has to start over.

Lets look at a better case. Long term contract so there is permanent lodge in the building. Wally also has Molly the Mage and Casey the Caster to help him. Neither of them is that experienced yet so Magic and Skill 3 for both.

No time or reagents needed for setting up lodge, so much time is saved each time. Molly and Casey do teamwork tests, average 2 net hits each which conveniently is equal to Wallys skill and the max amount of help he can get. Now he rolls 12 + 2 + 2 = 16 dice with limit of Force + 2 + 2 = 8 and ward rolls 8 as before. 5.33 vs 2.66 hits = 2.66 net hits. All participants resist same drain as before.
Now the ward covers (4+3+3)*50 =500 cubic meters or 200 square meters with 2.5 room height. 2 hours to sleep of drain, with Body of 3 that is on average 2.33 for Wally and 2.00 for the rest per hour. Enough to remove wound penalties. Then they do it again for different part of shop for another 200 square meters. Now it takes twice the amount of time before they have to start over.

I used lowish stats because I feel that regular Joe Averages have lower stats than runners and they arent that much of a specialists or in game terms not that optimized.

[Chinane]

You mean ONCE the Infiltrator has actually Assensed the Aura of the Ward's Creator. Can't pass a Ward using Masking without that particular bit of information.

Well, since fooling the ward is obviously possible and since it won't stop something non magic, i would simply mask as mundane (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

Well, since fooling the ward is obviously possible and since it won't stop something non magic, i would simply mask as mundane (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) .

Does not work that way, unfortunately. Your Magical Aura is still there, just masked, and the Ward will pick it up unless it is masked as the Ward's Creator or someone who has authorization to pass the ward. You neeed to Mask using that Signature.

[RHat]

(unless the GM is being pissy and refuses to allow buying hits on a drain test)

As an aside, that's not a GM being pissy, that's a GM being literate - Drain tests certainly fall under the "if there is a change of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions" clause. And really, buying hits on resistance tests is not a reasonable thing to expect in Shadowrun, where part of the POINT is that you can always come up empty, and thus a light pistol can take you down no matter how much armour you put on.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

As an aside, that's not a GM being pissy, that's a GM being literate - Drain tests certainly fall under the "if there is a change of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions" clause. And really, buying hits on resistance tests is not a reasonable thing to expect in Shadowrun, where part of the POINT is that you can always come up empty, and thus a light pistol can take you down no matter how much armour you put on.

Indeed... I have never seen anyone allow the Buying of Hits for any type of Resistance test... whether it be Drain or Damage.

[toturi]

As an aside, that's not a GM being pissy, that's a GM being literate - Drain tests certainly fall under the "if there is a change of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions" clause. And really, buying hits on resistance tests is not a reasonable thing to expect in Shadowrun, where part of the POINT is that you can always come up empty, and thus a light pistol can take you down no matter how much armour you put on.

Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on the situation.

[toturi]

Indeed... I have never seen anyone allow the Buying of Hits for any type of Resistance test... whether it be Drain or Damage.

You'd need to play more with a wider group of people then. I have seen hits be allowed to be bought for Drain and Damage.

[RHat]

Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on the situation.

Well, help me out here, because I really can't think of one where it should be allowed.

[DWC]

While I can't see allowing it in any sort of remotely dangerous situation, letting someone buy off the drain for casting a F1 Magic Fingers to grab another beer, or any other trivial use of low force spells in a totally non-threatened situation. On a run, I'd be surprised to see it allowed.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

You'd need to play more with a wider group of people then. I have seen hits be allowed to be bought for Drain and Damage.

Why would I want to play with a wider array of people, just to watch them do something the system strongly suggests against. Makes no sense.

[Jaid]

mana barriers such as wards can now be bypassed fresh out of chargen, no initiation required. it's not by any means guaranteed, but it's possible, and if done right will not alert anyone (magic + charisma vs barrier force x 2 [astral] is the test... each net hit lets you bring one extra thing through with you. failure means you don't break through, but no mention is made of alerting the creator whether you succeed or not (glitches and critical glitches would presumably change that, of course).

as to the watchers noticing the active spells, i'd point out that there's a decent chance the watcher should have reported the presence of *anyone* in the area regardless, active spells or not.

[Tymeaus Jalynsfe...]

mana barriers such as wards can now be bypassed fresh out of chargen, no initiation required. it's not by any means guaranteed, but it's possible, and if done right will not alert anyone (magic + charisma vs barrier force x 2 [astral] is the test... each net hit lets you bring one extra thing through with you. failure means you don't break through, but no mention is made of alerting the creator whether you succeed or not (glitches and critical glitches would presumably change that, of course).

as to the watchers noticing the active spells, i'd point out that there's a decent chance the watcher should have reported the presence of *anyone* in the area regardless, active spells or not.

Hmmmmm... Missed that one.

Agreed... But who Watches the Watchers? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

[toturi]

Well, help me out here, because I really can't think of one where it should be allowed.

The crucial part is the "might significantly change the course of the game's actions". My experience is based on SR4, so it may not be strictly appropriate for SR5, but I think it may be relevant. In scenario where it didn't matter might be that the mage knocked himself out casting a spell because the GM had planned to allow the PCs a long rest period afterwards anyway.

[tjn]

This strikes me as the same kind of GM dickery as this D&D game I was not in

No, it wasn't. I was playing the other mage in the campaign. The practice of warding was generally accepted by both me and the GM and most runs for my character started with an astral jaunt over to the target to pick out where the wards were, and unless we were trying to break into mitsuhama, it was usually only the obvious entrances that were warded. This encouraged the party making creative plans- something we actually enjoyed. More than once I told the other player to just jump through a window rather than walking through the front door or other obvious entrance.

But when we did go up against the equivalent of a zero zone? Yes there were nested wards around all the super sensitive areas, so much so that I tried to avoid elevator shafts if at all possible, but for our table, paranoid security just comes with the territory of a zero zone, and not random walls specifically enchanted against a specific PC.

So, yeah, no, nothing like that D&D game.

You mean set to alert the creator who then contacts security?

Yeah- it was the magical version of raising an alarm. It didn't automatically hose the run- it just changed the dynamics and presented different conflicts.

Also, a FAIR GM would probably have advised said player, that aura masking allows to pass wards undetected via an opposed test.

As the player of the other mage, I tried to tell him this, but he was utterly convinced that magic had no counters and was totally OP.

There is no upper limitation as such, but setting up wards takes time and area they cover isnt that large.

It was also 3rd edition, which didn't require a lodge (or any special materials), anyone who could astrally assense could put up a ward, it cost 100 Nuyen per hour, 1 hour per level of force of the ward, covered an area of Magic times 50 cubic meters, and lasted weeks equal to the number of successes on a Magic test. Under those conditions? Wards would be everywhere.

As an aside, that's not a GM being pissy, that's a GM being literate - Drain tests certainly fall under the "if there is a change of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions" clause. And really, buying hits on resistance tests is not a reasonable thing to expect in Shadowrun, where part of the POINT is that you can always come up empty, and thus a light pistol can take you down no matter how much armour you put on.

On 13 dice (elf shaman), against 3 drain, there's a ~0.2% chance of rolling a critical glitch, and a ~14% of not getting at least three successes and only a ~0.5% chance to not get any successes and suffer the grave penalty of a -1 die to all actions.

"So, what you're telling me is I have a chance!"

The POINT, of Shadowrun or any other RPG, is to have fun. We don't find meaningless dice rolling to be fun, therefore we don't roll unless that particular roll of the dice will have a meaningful impact upon the game. In Shadowrun, that usually means if you can buy all the hits you need, do it and get on with the story. You may like rolling lots of dice for every little thing. I don't. /shrug

Indeed... I have never seen anyone allow the Buying of Hits for any type of Resistance test... whether it be Drain or Damage.

Hi. I'm tjn. Now you have. Nice to meet you.

Why would I want to play with a wider array of people, just to watch them do something the system strongly suggests against. Makes no sense.

The system doesn't "strongly" suggest anything other than the GM is god and the puny players should feel lucky to even be in his game and accept his word as law.
The passage reads that "Buying hits often should not be done if there is a chance of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions."
Should not = Permissive either way, but the bias is against it under the subsequent conditions
If there is a chance of glitch or critical glitch = a strict reading would mean you always roll, because there's always a chance, even if it's insignificant, however if that was the case, they would have never put the passage in the game, so the word chance is meant in a colloquial and not literal sense. For me, once you get above 9 dice, critical glitches are too remote of a chance to be significant and thus I'd allow the buying of hits. Tastes vary.
Might significantly change the course of the game's actions = Any downtime or otherwise non-stressful situation automatically gets a free pass to buy hits.

My ruling would be that a player could buy hits on any non-contested roll, when in a non-stressful situation, or, if in a stressful situation, they had 9 or more dice after modifiers. I really don't see that as being unreasonable, but every table's different. Again, /shrug.