Best way to totally rail a shaman or mage

Best way to totally rail a shaman or mage, Because I can't think past guns and fist

regiomontanus View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 10:23 AM Post #26
Target Group: Members Posts: 4 Joined: 25-June 04 From: iowa Member No.: 6,438	magic does have natural opposition in the form of background count, toxicity, and bugs. Space, too. Mana warp-a-go-go. However, I'd like to borrow an idea from a d&d prestige class and suggest a new type of adept. The Forsaker adept. an individual who is mystically anti-magic. give him an anti-magic rating instead of magic rating, subtracting a fraction of that rating from TNs for spell resistance. Temporary bonuses for destroying foci/spirits or whizzing on telesema or something, bonuses to target magicians, maybe even astral perception? i don't know, it was just a prestige class that was an interesting idea for d&d, though completely against the magic heavy grain of that game, thereby underpowering it.

Kagetenshi View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 01:04 PM Post #27
Manus Celer Dei Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 17,012 Joined: 30-December 02 From: Boston Member No.: 3,802	Closest thing I can think of would be a cyberzombie with astral hazing SURGE characteristic and four levels of Magic Resistance. ~J

toturi View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 01:30 PM Post #28
Canon Companion Group: Members Posts: 8,021 Joined: 2-March 03 From: The Morgue, Singapore LTG Member No.: 4,187	A cyberzombie already has Astral Hazing... So a cyberzombie with maxed Magic Resistance Edge with Mana-Active Aura Deficiency Syndrome would really mess up any mage's day.

RedmondLarry

Jul 5 2004, 01:31 PM

Post #29

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QUOTE (Raife @ Jul 5 2004, 02:15 AM)

the doberman- it's target number for that Powerball is a 13. 8 + 2 +3 ... ... a 1D powerball would screw it up if it got a success...

A 1D powerball will do nothing, because another rule (SR3.182 Sorcery Test) says that the Force of the spell must be equal or greater than half the Object Resistance of the Object.

Kagetenshi

Jul 5 2004, 01:32 PM

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QUOTE (toturi)

A cyberzombie already has Astral Hazing...

I know it does. I'm talking about increasing the effect.

~J

RedmondLarry

Jul 5 2004, 01:47 PM

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QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jul 3 2004, 11:06 PM)

I feel like I am not providing sufficient dangerous challenges to the magicians in my group who have buttloads of karma and really beefy attributes and magical powers.

The various suggestions above are good. I'd like to address a couple of other points.

Perhaps you have given out too much Karma too quickly? In my experience, even Magicians with 200 earned Karma are still afraid of guns. Are these magicians past that? In our campaign, a magician who lives reaches that after about 500 hours of play time. (8 hours per session, 60+ sessions) This may be like the 1st level D&D characters who found CHAIN+3 and SWORD+3 in the lair of the first Kobold they killed. After a few weeks of play like this it became difficult to challenge them.

Are you enforcing Focus addiction? Encumberance/weight limits? Armor Layering penalties?

Do your magicians keep more points in Foci/Spells active than they can mask? Lonestar magicians do occasionally drive by in patrol cars, on their way to something important, and they will stop and ask for ID and spell permit from someone they see with powerful spells active.

Does NPCs use Karma Pool in the same manner and as freely as the player characters? If PCs commonly toss in one Karma pool on their first shot or first spell, your NPCs should as well.

Do your NPCs occasionally purchase an extra success using their Karma Pool, just because they can?

Do you have too many magicians on the team? The players on our team have chosen to limit themselves to two spellcasters on a mission. Who gets to play one rotates among the players.

Can you describe one of these powerful magicians? Attributes, magical powers, etc. Whatever allows him/her to brush off bullets.

I had a magician that specialized in using a Sniper Rifle on invisible mages. She would Astrally Perceive, then fire the gun at the spot on the physical plane where she could see someone on the Astral Plane.

TinkerGnome View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 05:08 PM Post #32
Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,138 Joined: 10-June 03 From: Tennessee Member No.: 4,706	Vehicles are a good challenge for all members of the team... few characters can reliably take down vehicles (particularly flying ones). Depending on how you read the rules for electrical attacks, though, it might not be difficult to bring down vehicles with electrical elemental manipulations. In fact, elemental manipulations are about the only thing worth using against armored vehicles in terms of magic. [edit] There is an uncontradicted example which shows a lightning bolt spell ignoring vehicle armor completely. [/edit]

Misfit Toy View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 05:15 PM Post #33
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 577 Joined: 12-June 04 Member No.: 6,398	I've always liked Ice elemental manipulations. There aren't any canonical spells that use that effect in 3rd Edition, but its one of my favorites. Not only does it make the terrain treacherous, it also forces a Crash Test, causes flying vehicles to stall, kill plants, and increase its Damage Code against more spirits (all fire and water based ones) than any other elemental effect.

Raife

Jul 5 2004, 06:04 PM

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QUOTE

A 1D powerball will do nothing, because another rule (SR3.182 Sorcery Test) says that the Force of the spell must be equal or greater than half the Object Resistance of the Object.

Excellent point OurTeam. So vehicles really do mess up a mages day. I say throw 3 Lynx Drones at him with those MMG's filled with Gel Rounds... that will put a damper on his day.

Misfit Toy View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 06:10 PM Post #35
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 577 Joined: 12-June 04 Member No.: 6,398	[dammit]

Adarael

Jul 5 2004, 11:15 PM

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QUOTE

You pretty much have to specifically look for cased ammo firing guns in the 2060s since they're a minority. The only real reason to have/use them is because you can make your own ammo (in mechanics terms, at least). Here's a question for people who know.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking of Cyberpunk 2020 here. If what you're saying is true, why do they specifically provide rules for converting standard, out-of-the-book weapons to caseless and giving them a boost of 20% to their ammo capacity? There'd be no need to do so.

I'm pretty sure you're thinking CP2020, where all guns are considered caseless unless it specifically states otherwise (shotguns, the Nova Citygun, etc)

Misfit Toy View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 11:19 PM Post #37
Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 577 Joined: 12-June 04 Member No.: 6,398	They don't. At least not in 3rd Edition. In 3rd Edition (p. 276, "Firearms") caseless weapons are the dominant weapons on the market. You can buy a weapon that uses cased ammunition, and there's no change in price or stats whatsoever, but the only benefit in doing so is -- just as TinkerGnome said -- that its easier to create your own, homemade ammunition that way.

Adarael View Member Profile	Jul 5 2004, 11:30 PM Post #38
Deus Absconditus Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 2,742 Joined: 1-September 03 From: Downtown Seattle, UCAS Member No.: 5,566	Huh. Interesting. I must've missed that. I guess I didn't have to spend all of last game sweating over those machine pistol shells I left all over the Yakuza's bunraku parlor... Incidentally, this was my mage. Whose friend got kidnapped by the Yakuza, and was going to be turned into a persona-fixed meat puppet. And I almost died trying to get her back, despite my 300 some odd Karma, my retarded levels of armor, and 6 years of running. So you know what? The Girlfriend trick? It works. OH, how it works.

Wounded Ronin

Jul 6 2004, 05:00 AM

Post #39

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QUOTE (OurTeam)

QUOTE (Wounded Ronin @ Jul 3 2004, 11:06 PM)

I feel like I am not providing sufficient dangerous challenges to the magicians in my group who have buttloads of karma and really beefy attributes and magical powers.

The various suggestions above are good. I'd like to address a couple of other points.

Perhaps you have given out too much Karma too quickly? In my experience, even Magicians with 200 earned Karma are still afraid of guns. Are these magicians past that? In our campaign, a magician who lives reaches that after about 500 hours of play time. (8 hours per session, 60+ sessions) This may be like the 1st level D&D characters who found CHAIN+3 and SWORD+3 in the lair of the first Kobold they killed. After a few weeks of play like this it became difficult to challenge them.

Are you enforcing Focus addiction? Encumberance/weight limits? Armor Layering penalties?

Do your magicians keep more points in Foci/Spells active than they can mask? Lonestar magicians do occasionally drive by in patrol cars, on their way to something important, and they will stop and ask for ID and spell permit from someone they see with powerful spells active.

Does NPCs use Karma Pool in the same manner and as freely as the player characters? If PCs commonly toss in one Karma pool on their first shot or first spell, your NPCs should as well.

Do your NPCs occasionally purchase an extra success using their Karma Pool, just because they can?

Do you have too many magicians on the team? The players on our team have chosen to limit themselves to two spellcasters on a mission. Who gets to play one rotates among the players.

Can you describe one of these powerful magicians? Attributes, magical powers, etc. Whatever allows him/her to brush off bullets.

I had a magician that specialized in using a Sniper Rifle on invisible mages. She would Astrally Perceive, then fire the gun at the spot on the physical plane where she could see someone on the Astral Plane.

Well, as far as amount of karma, the character in question had about 20 karma dice which they got from several years of play. This did indeed tend to make small arms fire not so pointful when the characters would have like 7 points of ballistic. (armor jacket + form fitting armor)

Focus addiction is something that had slipped my mind. I'll have to look up the details on it an reread it, but I could slap that on. It would certainly make sense as one character was always running around with a mask focus and another with a levitation focus.

Let's see....as far as the specific stuff that caused the problems....

One character had Willpower 9, a pretty powerful Control Thoughts, and a sword focus. That is probably the more dramatic example.

I guess I could go with a few astrally percieving snipers. That's not a bad idea. It also would entail relatively simple rules for me to keep track of.

Someone mentioned vehicles. I always thought it would be cool to run down the party with, say, a Roadmaster, but I always thought it would be tough to handle that rules-wise. In order to run someone over with a vehicle you need to keep track of exactly where everyone is on some kind of map, and then you need to crunch all the numbers to figure out exactly what the Roadmaster is doing. This would be difficult in the contect of an IRC game, which is what this is.

There were lots of excellent suggestions in this thread so far...thanks a lot, everyone. I'm still thinking about this, but maybe a good place to start would be a toxic domain filled with critters and astrally percieving snipers. Yes.....

tisoz View Member Profile	Jul 6 2004, 06:12 AM Post #40
Free Spirit Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 3,950 Joined: 26-February 02 From: Bloomington, IN UCAS Member No.: 1,920	The easiest way is to raise their Target Numbers. And not just from wound modifiers. Hit them with some drugs in a DMSO solution. Even cheap ones like Pepper Punch. Hyper is bad on mages. Visibility modifiers from smoke, mist, rain, etc. will make targeting harder. Astral Static is a good spell to throw and curtail spell casting.

kevyn668 View Member Profile	Jul 7 2004, 04:53 AM Post #41
Runner Group: Members Posts: 2,751 Joined: 8-August 03 From: Neighbor of the Beast Member No.: 5,375	Astrally perceiving snipers...? There goes the neighborhood. :P

ShadowGhost

Jul 7 2004, 06:54 AM

Post #42

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QUOTE (Eyeless Blond @ Jul 5 2004, 09:03 AM)

Powerbolt/ball cast at a low Force and high Damage Level are probably one of your best bets for taking out drones, actually; E. Manips at low-Force/Deadly damage run just behind it.

Don't forget, further down on the same page, it also states:

QUOTE

If the Armor Rating of the vehicle is equal to or greater than the force of the Combat Spell, the spell has no effect.

So low force Powerbolt/Ball may fail before the spell even hits the vehicle.

And for Elemental Manipulations, same Page:

QUOTE

Elemental Manipulations are therefore treated as normal weapons against vehicles. Stage down the Damage Level by one (D toS, S to M and so on), and reduce the force (or power) of the spell by half, and also by the vehicle's Armor Rating.

If the reduced power of the spell does not exceed the vehicles Armor Rating, the spell is ineffective against that vehicle.

So against an Vehicle Armor Rating of 4, you would need to cast a Minimum force 18M Elemantal Manipulation to do any damage.

Force 18/2 = 9 (As normal weapon against Vehicle Armor)
9- 4 (armor Rating) = 5
5 exceeds Vehicle's Armor Rating of 4. It does L damage.

Meanwhile the Mage is almost dead from Physical Drain (resisting 10S Physical Drain on Lighting Bolt, or 11D on Ball Lightning)

TinkerGnome View Member Profile	Jul 7 2004, 12:17 PM Post #43
Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,138 Joined: 10-June 03 From: Tennessee Member No.: 4,706	Lightning spells ignore metal armor. According to an example in R3, this seems to apply to all vehicle armor.

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