[X] My Assistant

[Bane]

[DocMortand]

[Mr.Cato]

yes, we have been staging this damage down. Which I see is wrong.

As for mundanes defending. Well.. they just have to rely on a buddy mage for spell shielding or spell defence. Also remember the modifiers for cover and lighting ..ect.

[mfb]

this is why the SOP of any armed group is "kill the mage first". mages' power, while appreciable, is easily balanced by the number of bullets they attract.

[DrJest]

Hmm... actually this makes spells less deadly than staging down, or am I reading this wrong?

I mean, Sammy Samurai with a Willpower of 5 gets hit by Mike Mage's 3S Manabolt. Mike Mage bombs out and rolls 3 successes; Sammy scores lucky and rolls all 5. With staging, Sammy would still take a M wound; under canon, he takes diddly-squat.

Or did I make a huge boo-boo here?

[RedmondLarry]

No boo-boo. Combat spells don't do less than the selected base damage. Death Touch is all-or-nothing. Even an equal number of successes by the defender is all it takes to take nothing.

[Ol' Scratch]

It's only less deadly in that they need fewer successes to escape injury. Unfortunately, magicians tend to have a lot more dice to throw. Using your example, Sammy Samurai has a whole 5 dice to toss to resist. Mike Mage has in excess of 12 (Sorcery 6, Spell Pool 6) not including Elemental or Totem bonuses, foci, or anything else along those lines.

Even with the staging down of damage included, Sammy doesn't stand much of a chance unless he has another magician helping him with Spell Defense.

[LinaInverse]

[BitBasher]

You'd be surprised how many people try to cheeze the dice mechanics with force 2 attack/combat spells.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[LinaInverse]

[mfb]

i believe that in 2nd ed, you rolled your spell's force to cast it. if so, that's probably where the confusion comes from.

[GrinderTheTroll]

[Glyph]

One thing to keep in mind about mages is that they tend to have lots of dice that they can potentially throw at people, but normally those dice are split between three things - spellcasting, helping to resist the Drain, and spell defense.

The deadly dice assault happens when a mage is casting a spell whose Drain can be resisted by Willpower alone, and faces no mages on the opposing side. It's still risky, though, because sometimes Willpower won't soak all of the Drain, and you can rarely be 100% sure that there is no awakened opposition. It's the near-equivalent of a sammie blowing all of his Combat Pool on an assault rifle burst, and saving none for dodging.

I suppose I don't find it too unbalancing, because a manabolt against Willpower: 3 is about as deadly as an Ares Alpha against Body: 3. Characters who have instant-kill attacks are not hard to make in Shadowrun. On the flip side, a Willpower of 6 or better makes it damn tough to affect your character with manabolt, etc. Even if the mage is rolling lots of dice, 6's can be elusive.