Magic Unchecked Options

[ShortBusFury]

Has anyone had any problems with magic characters becoming grossly overpowered in comparison to the non-magic characters at the high-end game (100+ karma)? This has been my own personal experience with chracters that I have made in the past, but only when initiate grades were involved. Gamemasters have tried throwing armored vehicles, great dragons, and anti-magic critters at me often with little or no effect. One time I even sat down with a gamemaster and helped him create tactics solely to help him try and kill my character. The ones that could hurt him, couldn't see him. The only effective tactic we came up with seemed to be other spellcasters with a higher initiate grade. He was a beacon in astral space due to all the anchored spells, however there wasn't a single spell on him that was anchored with less than 12 karma, so all the attempts made to take down his buffs were pretty moot as is sense spells would pickup the astral attacks and he would wipe the floor with them while the opponent attacked the spell. If things got nasty, I'd just pull up a few of my rating 14 elementals I validly rolled for and kept on standby. I stopped playing him around 230+ karma just because it was exceedingly unfair and unfun to my teammates. There were other players that had more karma than I and couldn't hold a candle to my power. Currently, our GM just isn't allowing initate grades, which I agree is a really good tacitc. However it does make it pretty hard to protect your magical gear without initiate masking. Has anyone else run into similar problems and, if so, did you encounter any positive results against ongoing mage-cheese?

[James McMurray]

You know I haven't had that problem (because I haven't ran much). But my Wolf Shaman in the revolving game got to be pretty nasty and he never even broke the 100 karma mark. Of course, he was heavily initiated.

I think this week's session showed that combining the combat and magic pools did a heck of a lot to power down the spellcaster. It may have done more than it should have, given that the phys ad was indestructible and the shaman was a house of straw. I'd like to see how things go with the entire party there though.

And of course, we're nowhere near the 100+ karma mark (with only one player having 1 karma, we're a really long way off).

I do think that defending one's magical gear shouldn't really be an issue much of the time. If an astral spellcaster sees some sort of active focus on a character, most of them would rather try to take the enemy down without destroying such a valuable resource. Sure, if destroying that item is the only way to win, they'll do it in a heartbeat. But when your standard security mage (or even a special NPC) sees an item worth 315,000 :nuyen: (A force 3 power focus) he's likely to try and get that item for himself before he trise to destroy it.

[Crimson Jack]

My group (4-5 players) ranges from 260-310 karma, IIRC (about 35-40 runs total). So, its always a high-powered game. Most of the group is awakened and the threats are generally of the same type and caliber. There are plenty of ways to mess with a highly magical group though, background count and wild magic zones being just two of several easy ways out. Stacking the mundane odds heavily against them is another, as is dealing with situations where the dice don't matter nearly as much as the story elements in play. But yeah, I started noticing things getting a little crazy when an encounter with the Wild Hunt was uncomfortable, but not hair-raising.

[FrostyNSO]

Yep,
We've had this problem. Take a moment to think for a second. Your guy had 100+ karma.

This guy had 1000+

It became way too hard to keep up, and nothing short of a tactical nuke could take him down. Finally, on a ridiculously high-powered run, he was faced with the option of ascending to a higher, seperate existance (thus retiring the character), or trying to escape the corp facility (underwater arcoblock) before it's cache of nuclear weapons went up.

He first tried disarming the warheads, going so far as summoning elementals to try and do some of them for him, but found that there were simply too many to do in time (30 second timer). Finally he tried to contain the blast with a magical barrier (I forget which spell). After much karma pool use, this failed.

That was the worst guy we had.
It was also a nightmare trying to deal with the crap he would pull before and after the run. He basically had carte-blanche to do whatever he felt. Even GD's couldn't stop him.

edit: This was in my earlier GM days. Nowadays, problems like these get nipped before they arise.

[ES_Riddle]

What is your method for dealing with snipers or other assassination techniques? In the time that you've climbed to that level of karma you've definitely made enemies who are probably more than willing to spend large quanities of money to hire a well-prepared squad of killers.

Adept sniper+Shielding spotter+conjurer makes for a very effective team, especially if a troll machine gunner is there to provide a little bit of physical backup.

They stake out a floor that was formerly a cubical farm (they will need the space, as you'll soon see). In preparation for whatever sort of setup you are being setup by (Johnson, faked phonecall from a trusted ally, real phonecall from a fixer who was paid more than you're worth), the conjurer draws a force 18 hermetic circle. The adept sniper takes position within the circle that provides LOS to the setup point. The shielding spotter assignes shielding dice to everyone. The troll is within the circle ready to do what he does, and that is kick ass. The conjurer starts conjuring something lower than force 18 but high enough that you will show up well before he is done.

Surprise round- (*at this point the only one you could possibly hope to notice would be the ruthie wearing sniper, the rest are not within LOS of the window that is open)
Sniper: snipes and then shoots again
you: are lucky if you are alive and doubly lucky if you know where the shots came from, probably either taking cover and calling elementals
conjurer*:keeps conjuring
shielder*: keeps shielding
troll*: keeps being ready to kick ass

Next round-
sniper: shoots some more
you: sic elementals on people
elementals: run into serious problems with a rating 18 barrier
conjuerer: keeps conjuring
Shielder: keeps shielding
troll: starts kicking ass by bombarding your location with heavy weapon fire

Basically your buddies are the only thing that can save you in this situation. You will be looking at ridiciulous target numbers to fire spells at anyone within that circle, spirits will be unable to breach it, and the only hope is to physically disrupt it. Fortunately people who do this for a living are smart and will put themselves way out of grenade launcher range.

[MagicalGirlPrett...]

We had a pair of mages (one mine, one a friend's) that accumulated upwards of 200+ Karma, and I think we broke our GM. He ran out of ways to try and kill us and now all we get are horrible "tactical" ninja stories based on what he read on Bullshido.com.

[Tarantula]

ES, of course the next thing you do is ask your elementals to sit in the window so that the sniper can't shoot at you anymore, while you wait for your buddies to do something.

[James McMurray]

You said "you're lucky to be alive". There's two flaws with that plan:

1) If the mage's defenses are so high (from quickened spells and sustaining foci) then you're not likely to be able to hurt him. If you do have enough firepower to hurt him, you've got more than enough firepower to destroy most other characters. It has to be carefully done or it turns into a TPK.

2) Sniping a player's character to death is not fun.

I'd personally rather ask them to retire than set up a situtation where they are lucky to be alive after the first shot.

[ShortBusFury]

[Buck Satan]

Man all this trouble with mages. =( Since I am always the GM I constantly keep my players in check especially my mages and physads that run in my party. I don't have uber elementals come and wreck their day I just enforce rules always and also they walk a very very thin line between essence loss from injuries and stimpack and focus addicition. I once had a fenrir shaman lose 2 points of magic because he was severly injured and had gotten addicted to stims and combat drugs so that he could keep up with the party. And of course he geas' but in the long haul his character was on the edge. He broke 100 karma after 28 sessions worth of roleplaying and has managed to keep himself in check also it helps to know the rules and understand the way that each of you players will act so that you can better counter what crap they try to pull as to not let them be uber.

Now about trying to kill that uber mage you having a problem with try the following: Challlenge him to a mage duel so that you can weaken his magic rating if you succeed, hit him with some strain 3 bacteria in case you are feeling particularly nasty maybe you should infect him with vitas or perhaps you should just thor him from orbit(I wouldn't recommend it as it would probably kill the party too which is never good.) Sniping is overrated and over done and billy badass mages usually never do the trick as if they are even slightly weaker than the pc's you can even making an uber mage sweat goodbye.

[Mr.Sinister]

Years ago, when I started playing with a group that was like the characters described above, the GM encouraged the players to turn the characters into NPCs that could become contacts for training, teaching spells, mini Johnsons, etc. The players actually enjoyed doing this since many of the runs they were going on would become boring and not much of a challenge.

Just an thought/option.

[ShortBusFury]

Yeah, so far the most effective tactic has been to nip the problem before gets the chance to occur. That's an idea. Powerful mages never like competition... it'd be understandable if all the mages in a city were secretly being watched by powers that were interested in not being contested. Alot of NPC spell-slingers aren't listed with higher initiate grades than 4. You could always create a story reason for that which the players won't know about till they start getting odd warnings as they begin their mystical assent. Anyone trying to go about reaching initiate 5 is harmlessly subdued by individuals far superior in power to them for the first couple of attempts. Then, if the player persists trying to ascend despite the warnings, things could start getting deadly. The only way to go about getting safely to initate grade 5+ would be to join the order in question, causing the player to become a pawn in their schemes and lose more and more freedom as they get involved in shady magical politics... I think I like that idea. :love:

[MinMaxShadowrunn...]

Well well well, It's true magical characters can get VERY buff, however it's all up to the GM to have the awareness not to allow a mage to just walk around. The GM's I play with constantly keep us in check. Making barriers so we'd either battle the barrier and alert possible enemies or lose the spell. Effectively it has prevented us from dumping Karma into spells that unbalance our characters. I don't think it's right to limit initiating, I think it's a good tactic limiting how many mages/shamans characters can be in a group. Of course a group of only mages/shamans would fall pretty hard to most physical attacks. A good astral run annilates mages to...... 1 or more horrors will destroy mages/ everything. By the way if you have the money to by MULTIPLE force 14 elementals/ get more than one service, your GM is being really generous on the money. If you like to waste the usual one service, as a gm I say go ahead. there's more to come. I like the idea of background counts, always work. Visual modifiers tend to make things harder too. In the end it's up to the gm. Rule # 2 of shadowrun always geek the mage first.

[MinMaxShadowrunn...]

It doesn't make sense that high level initiates would waste their time watching over peons. Typically they only care if the runner in question interfere's with their affairs. Runs should be designed to give runners a challenge, if the runners are all mages, throw a electronic/stealth run in their face. Balance the opposition, book runz are not meant to be followed to the T. they are guide lines to create a challenge. Push the envelope, give more karma pool to the opposition. If the NPC's dont have a mage givem one.

[Crimson Jack]

[FrostyNSO]

I know someone on this board has a dude that made like 2 or 3 thousand.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Kanada Ten]

Frag, all I do is read the news...

[RedmondLarry]

[ES_Riddle]

[ES_Riddle]

[ShortBusFury]

[ShortBusFury]

[hyzmarca]

The easiest way to deal with a powerful mage is to send the party on a run that takes them through a decent immitation of Hell: malicious Free Blood and Shadow spirits, enough human suffering to create a background count between 8-10, and mutant toxic critters of all shapes and sizes.
Have hoards of mutants for the mundane team members to take out, leave the Spirits for the near-impotent 200+ Karma mage.

[Fortune]

Or send them into Space.