Magic Loss and High Grade Initiates, For those with Initiates Grade 6 and up Options

[blakkie]

Since there are lots of ways for Magic checks to occur, and GMs could either lay it on or pull punches, i'm going to assume there is some spread here. But i'm curious what the spread is.

[Edward]

I have never lost magic for anything other than cyber, any never more than one point.

I have never played a character that reseved a deadly wound although it has com to within a point of karma pool normally I manage to utilize enough stealth and cover. And I am always very careful with focus addiction, all the other causes are rare in the extreme.

Edward

[Chibu]

I've lost one poit to Bioware with my current character, and don't plan to lose anymore

My last character (Grade 7 i think before the campaign ended) didn't lose any.

[Grinder]

It rarely occurs that a mage loses magic points. One of my chars lost one after being knocked down with a deadly wound.
Another char lost two points. One after a deadly wound and the other after being treated without the +2 modifiert. Yep, was the same character and lost both points in one moment. ;)

There are two or three chars around over the years who lost one or two points, but i can't remember how this happened. But compared to the amount of magic points they got the loss is slightly low.

[toturi]

One of the first things that players with magical PCs learn is knowing when to run and when to stand and fight.

All magical PCs I've seen have lost their magic(if any) to cyber/bio, rather than to physical Deadly Wounds.

[Shockwave_IIc]

When i play a Magically active character, magic loss is there right next to death, kinda like a rigger and their drones. However in the games i've run the worst case of loss was, 2 to deadly wounds and 1 to augmentions in the same character.

[EDIT]
Lvl 9 Adept Initiate, and all the loss was Geas'd.

[Talia Invierno]

Whoo-ee, the fourth attempt at logging in was the charm! :grinbig: (Edit: make that fifth time, before I was able to post this.)

Why is it perceived as being so rare that a magician loses Magic points due to D wounds?

The old standby is "geek the mage first". This applies to NPCs as well. Unless the GM is only ever NPCing basic secguards and gangers and other low-level types (who might have no way of knowing just which pistol-wielding armour-wearing person is the magician), it will be a very high priority to discover who the magician of the team is, especially once the magic starts flying or the first spirit makes its appearance. If they're not toting a pistol, suddenly identification becomes almost self-evident. (Not quite always though: there's always exceptions, but not the kind that would keep a secteam from shooting down someone who looks like they might be a hostile magician.) That information will be communicated immediately to every person responsible for keeping the team out or contained or attempt to capture, as the case may be.

Based on what I've been reading around these boards, overall there doesn't seem to be a particularly high priority on actively sustained defensive magic (barriers, armour, deflect, combat sense the spell) during infiltrations. Improved Invisibility is a popular one -- but useless on the astral. While potentially an exceptionally powerful, flexible, and generally all-round useful spell, Physical Mask has all kinds of potential problems built right in, especially if you're using it as your only means of camouflage. (We were having fun discussing some of those in the Myth of the Moral Shadowrunner thread.

One possibility for the relatively low D-level damage might be that the magician is most commonly used as active and on-site astral reconnaisance: and if this is the case, there should be a real risk of being permanently trapped (ratio depending on the level of facility usually targetted).

Cutting and running is one thing -- but really (again based on what I've seen around the boards), how many teams see this as a regular viable option? And if it's only the magician always doing it ...

[Dawnshadow]

Just getting up to grade 6 right now. Plans for many more when he gets the karma.

To date, have lost magic 3 times to deadly wounds.
None to cyber/bio.
None to stimpacks/medical treatments.
Magician's Way adept, so can't astrally project, although his ally spirit has been disrupted around 4-5 times.. so the odds are good if he did have projection, he'd have lost magic because of it.

He's avoided losing magic 4 times.

Hmm.. those deadly wounds..
The fireball.
The sword in the chest.
The cutters.
The Giant Regenerating Cat With Movement.
The Fireball That Ate the Hospital.
The powerball.
The last fireball. (I wonder if he's going to become phobic?)

He had magic loss hit him 3 times in a row, starting at cutters and ending with the hospital wing being devestated. And only one was to non-magical opposition. The sword-weilder was some type of magical construct.

[toturi]

While standard SOP may be to take the mage down first, the shaman in my table top gaming group took that and made it work against my NPCs since he has Hidden Life in him (While I as the GM know that the PC has Immunity to Normal Weapons, the NPCs do not have any reason to suspect an invulnerable mage, so...). So he does not run unless he really needs to and if he needs to run, the whole team is well-advised to run as well (they'd be outclassed by several magnitudes).

Adepts in my experience are nearly indistinguishable from street sams apart from obvious chrome which is usually hidden by armour anyway. Also there is no real incentive for the opposing team to target specifically the adepts, either that or the adept PC attacks and forces the NPCs to attack him.

I think there was a thread about how you could stun your astral projecting friend to bring him back thread some months ago.

[Smiley]

I don't think any of us have ever lost a magic point, but we're playing a high-powered, magic-based campaign and we roll 3D6 instead of 2 when rolling for magic loss. After grade 6, it's almost assured that you're going to suffer magic loss if you only roll 2.

[Edward]

Although NPCs to try to target mages its not always easy, first they would need to identify the mage, not easy when he is firing a gun instead of using attack spells, the presns of spirits dose give away that there is a mage but not who it is unless a magical action is taken or fetishes are worn openly.

An intelligent magician will limit his magic use in front of opponents to fast and deadly strikes effectively ending a confrontation where at all possible an hide it foci and fetishes as much as possible. It may even be worth the effort of placing some cheep fetishes on eth cyber tank just to throw the cent of a little further (I have run with some that would do that for me)

I may have different experiences if I get to play starry knight but he would have a low wisdom stat if there was one, in SR this is represented buy a distinctive stile flaw, he uses far to much magic.

Edward

[fistandantilus4....]

[Eyeless Blond]

[Shockwave_IIc]

Anybody thought up a better way of testing for magic loss?