Magic Unchecked Options

[Gyro the Greek S...]

Oh no, if I recall he was called "Tongo, Eater of Souls".

'cept, really, he'd eat anything.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Okay. I'm going to try and answer this one last time because there's something about this whole thread that seems absurd to me, and it's not the existence of the high-powered mage.

[ShortBusFury]

I'll ignore most of your other responses as they were mostly just opinionated down-talk in regards to people and events you have no knowledge of. No offense is taken however, as I would have not put such a question on an online forum if I did not expect to have to wade through said responses. I did like one thing which you mentioned, however:

[kevyn668]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Glad I could help, but if that's all that you gained from reading my post then my opinion of you is now lower than my opinion of your GM.

[Crimson Jack]

[kevyn668]

[Gyro the Greek S...]

I'll Dragon Scrabble you for it.

Whoever wins gets to claim true and overwhelming Shadowrun superiority.
:grinbig:

[kevyn668]

Scrabble on!! :)

[James McMurray]

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Okay, that does it.

I've been around here since the Deep Res forum first opened in various guises. In all that time and all those years, I have rarely if ever resorted to insults and character assassination. When I have, I have later apologized. The only time I did not apologize was when I was temporarily banned for being arrogant, which I will never apologize for.

But I'll be goddamned if I am going to sit here and take any crap anymore. I dare you to find anyone here who has consistently posted correct, cohesive, logical posts, often times with citations to the original source with as much depth and frequency as I have. I especially dare you to do so in the last three months, where the majority of my posts have included at least one reference to a SR book or other aspect of canon in an attempt to answer your* questions, because I am apparently a magnanimous idiot. Sure, I have attempted to add a measure of levity to some threads when it has been appropriate, or I engage in in-joke banter with some close acquaintances about a physad whose primary purpose seems to be 'punching bag' or about Nadja Daviar's dark brown nipples, but I have also spent hours writing out single posts describing such things as the DeeCee Sprawl with much better authority and detail than that fucking hack Steve Kenson ever did. I have been willing to admit myself wrong to the whole DS world when it came to SoE and in fact turned out to love the book and posted a rather long review of just one chapter because I felt it only necessary to explain why I did a 180 on the book and that specific chapter.

I have spent too many hours, blown off too many other priorities for this forum and to help you all out because I could, and my fall semester grades have proven that resoundingly. For the last five years, I have tried... God, have I tried... not to get involved in petty arguments, or character assassinations on this site. I have done my best to never step into a thread without being informed and bringing as much intellect as I could to a thread, especially the old Lounge threads, because to do otherwise is a waste of my time and all of yours.

I could defend myself if I wanted. I could tell you that I was angry and distracted when I wrote that response, and that it has been the cherry on the sundae of suck to events which have transpired for months that you did not know about, and never will, because I leave my life off this site, and I have done it for you all.

But I won't defend myself for that comment, or for any other comment I have posted over the years. The comment had information in it. The comment had ideas in it. The comment had a context of my complete lack of comprehension at the very nature of the conflict presented. But it was not some childish attempt at name-calling and insult, and it offends me to even be accused of making such a post.

I will not defend myself, to you Cynic, or to anyone here.

And, I will not waste anymore of my time on any of you here.


*"you" = all DS users.

[FrostyNSO]

You go Crimsondude, you don't owe anything to us bastards. :notworthy:

I have actually found your posts to be relevant, informative, and entertaining. Don't let the dregs get you down.

[RedmondLarry]

Hey Crimson, I like your posts. I find them valuable.

But school work should come first. I never graduated from anything after discovering roleplaying games. Keep your priorities straight, man.

[Tarantula]

Easy way to kill the mage. Small rigger spotter drone, something with a sig of 12. Big ship in the ocean, with a vaporizer railgun on it. Max range of 16,000. Battletac FDDM on ship, spotter, and riggers deck. Fire. Dead mage.

[ShortBusFury]

[James McMurray]

So does anyone have any more ideas on what mundanes can do to level the playing field against spellcasters?

Let's say, for instance, you have a world-spanning organization of magic-haters, trying to bring down the witchcraft using devils that are slowly destroying the moral fabric of the world. What do you do against such powerful opposition?

A few things that have been mentioned:

- camp out around backgroud counts and mana warps

- spotter drones and naval artillery

- ensure your bases are scout proof (easier if you use the 2nd ed. rule about projecting through living material)

- destroy the opposition's rep. They may have magical power, but you can try to prevent them from getting political or social power

- have the entrances to your bases rigged up to make passing through them invisibily much harder: 2' deep water in the hallways will be uncomfortable, but leave nice empty holes where the invisible guy is walking

- hit them through their friends and family. All the power in the world won't help you if you're afraid to aanything because the enemy has your mom dangling over a pot of boiling oil.

I think we can all agree that you can ramp up the power on enemy mages to challenge magically active and karmically advanced characters. Or combine spirits, magic, and assault weaponry to good effect. But what can us mundanes do?

[Tarantula]

"Us" mundanes can bomb them, rigger assaults are the heavy hand of mundanes. The best thing about the naval, is they're not likely to care about a little drone flying near them, if they are, theres not a whole lot they can do to affect it, other than mostly powerbolt or wreck(rotodrone). Powerbolts are rather hard to get to fully affect the drone, especially considering that the rigger will be going before the mage 99% of the time.

[kevyn668]

Which mundanes? PCs or NPCs?

NPCs...splatguns, smoke grenades, ruthinium.

PCs...splatguns, smoke grenades, ruthinium, and pocessing skills the mage doesn't. ;)

Just read Trantual's post: I'd say your percentage is off. Most people around here favor a rating one Sustaining Focus for Improved Reflexes 3 right out of the gate.

[BitBasher]

Regardelss of where someone may perceieve his attitude I largely agree with everything that Crimsondude has said.

I have run campaigns past 300+ karma and the mages never really became unbalanced versus the other characters.

Pretty much every example of mages becoming horribly imbalanced has been the result of a GM not properly enforcing the limitations of the magically active. This includes background count, enemies, proper LOS, Alarm wards, destroying active foci from astral space, foci addiction, proper time spent to lear spells, proper time spent to aquire gear, Mana warps, astral shallows... The list goes on and on.

Even aquiring a force 14 conjuring library should be a pretty good pain in the ass, as should someplace to put a force 14 summoning circle, and aquire the force 14 summoning materials. The skill takes a boatload of time to learn, and should really take a mentor which would be nigh impossible to find and probably an adventure or two in itself.

To boot, while the mage spends karma on skills and spells and initiation, the mundanes are spending that on raw skills, meaning that for an equal amount of karma the mundanes should have significantly higher skills. Also, the mundanes by now should have had many, many opportunities to upgrade cyber and gear.

Also, in order to survive the harrier moments the team (and the individuals) should have blown a pretty sizeable amount of their karma pool, which should make it somewhat self limiting. At 100 karma in a campaign in my experience the karma pool is rarely over 6. In a 300 karma campaign the pool is rarely over 12. Mechanically the more karma they have the more lethal things get because there's a finer line between surviving and dying. Things that damage them are high enough power that if they don't dodge, they probably die.

On the issue of great dragons, just the fact they dragons may have a couple hundred karma pool and have been alive for tens of thousands of years means a team should never be able to reastically take one head on. It's their anchored, quickened and sustained spells that will get you. It's their divination. They know you are coming probably before you do. They are basically impossible to ambush because of that. Not to mention their karma warping abilites, where they can spend a karma pool to make you reroll all your sucesses. unless the GM is in fact incompetent (IMHO) a party stands absolutely no chance against a GD. These creatures are smart enough no human GM can realistically portray their intelligence. That's my main problem with using them. The players can outsmart the GM, but the characters can never realistically outthink a GD.

[Tarantula]

[kevyn668]

[FrostyNSO]

In our campaign, we are at about 150-180 good karma on average. The players average about 1 or 2 karma pool.

The mage, conversely, has none.

Bitbasher is correct. Most cases of overpowered characters are due to GM's not knowing the ways to counter the characters. They may be great GM's, just uninformed. Reading the first post on this thread reminds me of my first days GMing, when I didn't know the rules quite so well as I do now.

[Tarantula]

In my example, I meant for said rigger to have a VCR3. Besides, if you have naval weapons, you have a VCR3.

99% of the time is obviously a false statistic, but meaning the majority. In the instances in which the rigger doesn't go first, the mage can't do a whole lot to stop it. At best, they could powerbolt the drone, provided they know powerbolt at a high enough force to affect it. Hell, the rigger could just use 3 drones, that aren't close enough to ball all 3 at once. Done. Even if one gets fried, the other drones can easily get the lock, and then the ship shoots the mage.

[kevyn668]

I was just nitpicking your 99% thing. :)


This post has been edited by kevyn668: Jan 22 2005, 08:58 PM

[Tarantula]

Heh. Just to add to my side. The riggers minimum initiative will be 10+reaction. The mages will be 4+reaction. Which will usually go first?

Another rigger way to kill the mage. Run them over, with a vehicle. Sure, they might have lots of reaction and such, but if the vehicle just comes by, then splat, most mages don't have a vehicle barrier spell anchored.