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Lord Ben
Okay, so a vampire casts a force 6 manaball. If he has magic 6 plus 6 spellcasting he rolls 12 dice. I can't dodge and I can only resist with my 3 willpower? When it hits I just take 8 boxes of damage? Is it really that simple?

Other than counterspelling (a whopping 4 more dice), what can be done to live through that?

They could also bump it up to force 12 and kill everyone with even one more success.
Jaid
why are you facing vampires with magic 6 if the best your own magician can do is 4 dice of counterspelling?

get him a counterspelling focus, for one thing. for another thing, tell your GM to stop putting you up against stuff you really shouldn't be fighting against in the first place. if your resistance + counterspelling gets more hits then his magic + spellcasting test, then his manaball will do nothing as well.

and also, this is the kind of thing you spend edge on.
Lord Ben
Well, had the GM not fudged on the dice rolls I'd have killed it after one manaball... So I'm not too worried about the power level. A few long bursts to the face and nearly anything goes down hard and permanent.

The spell just seems too easy to kill with.
Magus
Manaball/bolt is a hideous spell if you are facing off with someone who has a low willpower/spell defense. In my games it is primarily the Troll Killer as stereotypically they are low in the willpower arena. But I do agree if your GM is throwing something like this at you and you have little in the way of magical defense/muscle then he is taking major advantage of you.
Kleaner
There's a reason to always gank the mage first.

But remember that spell casting has penalties to visibility the same as shooting does. Darkness, cover, and other shooting penalties affect spell casting. (pg 173)

In other words, duck and run.
Lord Ben
It says that you need to see the target to affect them. What if there is an invisible mage in the area of effect? Would they be protected even if in the middle of a fireball?
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Lord Ben)
It says that you need to see the target to affect them. What if there is an invisible mage in the area of effect? Would they be protected even if in the middle of a fireball?

It used to be that part of spellcasting involved a split second of astral perception while casting the spell to allow the caster to syncronize auras. That bit of setting fluff was dropped to allow for spellcasters who had no access to astral perception, but nothing says that if you suspect you have invisible targets in your area of effect, you can't go on Astral Perception first.
Lord Ben
Or someone around the corner when clearly the center of the fireball would reach to them but the mage can't see them. Does it still affect them?
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Lord Ben)
Or someone around the corner when clearly the center of the fireball would reach to them but the mage can't see them. Does it still affect them?

Areas blocked from view by the corner would be unaffected.
Lord Ben
So if I have my chameleon suit on and the mage doesn't notice me but targets my buddy with a force 10 fireball I'm unaffected? I'll have to hide more.
RunnerPaul
QUOTE (Lord Ben)
So if I have my chameleon suit on and the mage doesn't notice me but targets my buddy with a force 10 fireball I'm unaffected? I'll have to hide more.

I don't think the chameleon suit will cut it. The modifier for Target Hidden (Blind Fire) is -6, and the chameleon suit only gives a -4. In other words, the mage sees you with dificulty, but still sees you.
Feshy
QUOTE

get him a counterspelling focus, for one thing.


Like most Foci, counterspelling Foci only affect a specific category of spells. Given how deadly combat spells are, I'd recommend that combat spells be that area. Also, you can specialize Counterspelling. For a starting level character, this could potentially add 5 dice to your resistance. That'll give "Average Willpower Joe" even odds against the vampire's manaball.

Of course, if the Vampire is allowed an equal amount of foci and specializations, you're still hosed. Magic seems much easier to cast than to resist for most PC's. For the most part this is good, but when a starting player can "Over-cast" a Mana Bolt at Force 9 and stand good odds of resisting most of the drain, it's not so pretty. Heck, change it to stunbolt, and a charisma 7 will 5 elf shaman can soak that drain by BUYING hits.

Then again, it's probably right on par, death-wise, with an Ares Alpha w/ gas vent and EX Explosive. SR4 rules look to be quite deadly.
FrankTrollman
Yeah, you can face enemies who can throw force 12 manaballs that will annihilate your entire party. You can also face enemies with anti-vehicular rocket launchers. Those are honestly even more deadly because there's not even a slim chance that you'll take no damage by getting more counterspelling + Willpower hits than they get Spellcasting + Magic hits.

It's the future, and weaponry is extremely deadly. That goes for magical and physical weapons.

-Frank
Jaid
incidentally, with fireball i don't believe the mage has to be able to see you, as it is an indirect spell.

manaball, if he doesn't see you (for example, by failing a perception check) then he can't affect you. fireball, however (iirc) actually just creates a sheet of flame that covers the area, whether the mage can see it or not.

not 100% sure on that, though...
RunnerPaul
That is the question isn't it? I don't see anything in the rules about Indirect combat spells on p.196 that says the limitations described in Area Spells on p.173 don't apply. Sounds like one for the FAQ.
Feshy
QUOTE (Jaid)
incidentally, with fireball i don't believe the mage has to be able to see you, as it is an indirect spell.

manaball, if he doesn't see you (for example, by failing a perception check) then he can't affect you. fireball, however (iirc) actually just creates a sheet of flame that covers the area, whether the mage can see it or not.

not 100% sure on that, though...

Even to create a "sheet of flame" a mage has to be able to see an area. You can't fireball around corners, in other words, as you can not see the area where you wish to create fire.

To me, the nature of indirect combat spells seems like it would allow you to hit unseen foes, the same way tossing a grenade would. You are creating an affect (limited to the area you can see) and then that affect effects those caught within its radius. However, the rules don't seem to support this, even though the fluff does. They don't flat out deny it either; so I would agree with putting it in the FAQ.
RunnerPaul
And while this hasn't been mentioned anywhere in the fourth edition rules, it's a good practice, and probably should be carried over. In previous editions, taking extraordinary measures to try to focus and tailor the shape of your area of effect automatically resulted in the spell failing. For example, picking a place to stand where you can't see your buddies because they're behind a corner of a wall was kosher, but holding up a cardboard window in front of your face to hide your buddies interfered with the mental mindset needed to be able to cast the spell.

Well, with SR4's Augmented Reality you wouldn't need the cardboard anymore. Just get your hacker buddy to whip up a special ARE Program that will black out your teammates on demand.
Lord Ben
While it makes sense to say you'd still be affected even if invisible or hidden via other means the fireball could also just be starting everyone on fire with your mind. If you don't target them and see them they don't get damaged by the fireball. Else the mage will just start targetting sections of wall, etc every time he thinks there is someone invisible or whatever nearby and hurt them that way.
Kremlin KOA
and that was a standard and accepted use of fireball
Oracle
As far as I know that is not how the good old elemental manipulation spells worked. A fireball is just that. A magically summoned ball of fire aimed by the mage at some point. It affects everything in its area of effect like a grenade would do and it is hindered by see-through barriers like a window-pane. If the new rules for indirect manipulation spells do not mention that, it has clearly been forgotten. I don't see any reason why that should have changed from 3rd to 4th edition. So you do in fact hit the invisible mage or the guy behind the corner.
Kremlin KOA
pretty much, you needed LOS to the center point.. it may have changed due as a sacrifice on the great altar of the universal rules system theory


edit: typoes and grammar
Oracle
QUOTE (Kremlin KOA)
pretty much, you needed LOS to the center point..

Jup, that's true.
Lord Ben
While what you say makes sense, can you provide any rules to back it up. The only thing I see is that if you don't see something you can't target it and only things you target can be affected.
Oracle
I can only quote from Geman second and third edition rulebooks. But I think that will possibly be no help to you. Until stated otherwise in an official FAQ I will stick to that rule.
Lord Ben
Hey, I speak a *little* German. I took it for a year in college, about 10 years ago...
FrankTrollman
The only relevent quote in the SR4 book is that Indirect Combat Spells work "like ranged attacks". How much like ranged attacks is an open question right now because the rules don't clarify that point.

But one could clim that any particular limitation that spells have that ranged attacks do not is superceded by that statement. So since ranged attacks have a blindfire penalty available, it is possible to make the argument that LOS is no longer needed to individual targets.

Of course, that argument enters the hand waving stages fast, because there are a numbe of rules that apply to ranged attacks that probably don't apply to indirect combat spells. But since it's probably supposed to work that way in the fluff, and it's a possible interpretation in the rules, I don't see any pressing need to continue arguing about it until it gets clarified in Street Magic.

-Frank
jervinator
I see no reason to believe that it has changed appreciably. The way I see it, that means that a ranged area attack goes off like a grenade. You must have LOS to the center-point, but the effect radiates from the epicenter, regardless of whether the caster/attacker has LOS from their position. In other words, the grenade launcher doesn't have to see you to fill you full of grenade fragments, so long as it lands close enough to you.

Now, if it were a DIRECT area spell, it'd be different. Then, you would need LOS, just like the Mana Ball of old. That, I believe, is the practical difference between direct and indirect spells.
Lord Ben
This is a new version, not an upgrade to the old version. So when it says:

QUOTE
Area Spells: Some spells target areas or points in space; in
this case the caster must be able to see the center of the area affected.
All visible targets within the area are affected; area spells
can aff ect more than one target at a time.


All "visible" targets would imply that invisible or unseen (due to a bad perception check on a hiding target) targets aren't affected. Even with indirect spells.
Oracle
We all know what is written in the book, but thank you anyway. biggrin.gif

But I think the majority of players will stick to the old rule which will almost certainly be carried over to SR4 in a future errata. It is simply the way indirect spells with elemental effects are supposed to work.

A fireball fills an area with flames. So an invisibility spell protects against fire? The elemental effects are not magical in their nature. They are just what they seem to be.
Azralon
You still need to synch the spell with the aura(s) of your target(s). So it could stand to "reason" that you need to see the target(s) to tell the spell what to hit.

I much preferred it when indirects had their own discreet physical targeting rules rather than this crossover rules junk. This is probably yet another case of edition-blending in which they wanted to simplify indirects but didn't do it completely.

Lord Ben
Fireballs, unlike grenades, do damage when they're more accurate however. A grenade blows up and does X damage regardless of how well thrown it was (apart from scatter). Rolling 10 successes to hit with a grenade doesn't ramp that damage up to 20P. However 10 on a fireball would ramp it up to 20P. Since you do more damage when "targetting" your fireball well it stands to reason that you do less damage or even no damage when you can't see your target as well or even at all.
blakkie
The counter to that is that the grenade has a preset amount of "boom" in it that is not altered by your skill. The same is not nessasarily true of the Fireball. How does a vision modifer possibly affect this you ask? The same way a vision modifer can cause a much higher chance of an ex-ex round blowing up your weapon. In the abstract you spent your limited amount of concentration on seeing that it took away from your skill elsewhere.

So the effort of aiming the Fireball into the shadows distracted from your beefing up the Fireball's effect.

EDIT: Does this mean if you are trying to hit unseen opponents with an AoE you should get the penalty for that? I'd say you could argue either way, with the argument against being you aren't aiming for the unseen. You are aiming for a specific point in space that you can [mostly] see.
Azralon
The damage of ball spells do not diminish when a target is further away from ground zero. It's not that you're creating a real explosion that eminates from a point in space; you're creating a spherical magical effect that's homogenous in damage potential.

So, yeah, not so much like grenades at all.
Demon_Bob
Gass grenades as written do not have diminishing effects within their area.

Having indirect spells not affect someone who is unseen in the open seems to make Invisibility and Chameleon suits just a little to powerfull.

Technically it would now allow you to cast a Area Affect Indirect spell into an area with three guards and your invisible mage/ninja buddy, without hitting your buddy.
RunnerPaul
As I've already pointed out, the chameleon suit's effect is less than the modifier for "Target Hidden (Blind Fire)", so it's quite safe to assume that someone wearing a chameleon suit is able to be seen, they're just much harder to target.
Fortune
QUOTE (Azralon)
You still need to synch the spell with the aura(s) of your target(s). So it could stand to "reason" that you need to see the target(s) to tell the spell what to hit.

I must have missed that in SR4 ... and in SR3 as well. That used to be the case back in SR2 (and 1), but even then it only applied to Direct Damage spells like Manaball, never with the Indirect spells like Fireball.
ThatSzechuan
QUOTE (RunnerPaul)
As I've already pointed out, the chameleon suit's effect is less than the modifier for "Target Hidden (Blind Fire)", so it's quite safe to assume that someone wearing a chameleon suit is able to be seen, they're just much harder to target.

What if they fail their perception test to notice you?
RunnerPaul
Good point.
Oracle
When you do not notice someone in any way you can't attack him at all. That's not what we are talking about.
ThatSzechuan
QUOTE (Oracle)
When you do not notice someone in any way you can't attack him at all. That's not what we are talking about.

I'm talking about someone in the suit, standing next to the person you're targeting, but whom you do not notice.
Oracle
Ah! Okay. That person should get wasted just like the main target.
RunnerPaul
So when deciding what targets in an area of effect are actually visible and affected ("all visible targets are affected"), we don't use the perception test described in the paragraph just before the area spells section ("In some cases the caster may need to make a Perception Test to determine if a given target can be seen well enough to target with a spell?"). I can sort of see an arguement for treating it like that, since you're not trying to target the guy in the chameleon suit with the spell, you're just trying to determine if he counts as a "visible target" that can feel the effect of an Area Spell, but I want to be sure that's what you're trying to say.
Lord Ben
Since I play the unnoticable guy in the stealth suit with 16 dice in my stealth skill and a silenced weapon I vote for being unnoticed makes me immune.
blakkie
QUOTE (Lord Ben)
Since I play the unnoticable guy in the stealth suit with 16 dice in my stealth skill and a silenced weapon I vote for being unnoticed makes me immune.

You are set then....once you find a GM that runs his game based on democracy. However since simple democracy can be described as "two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch" you might have a tough time trying to track one down. wink.gif
Kleaner
For the stealth suit guy, if your getting hit by an indirect spell, your SOL.

If it's a direct area effect spell, then the mage would only hit you if he noticed your there.

We and a similar situation come up in our game a few weeks ago. A chopper was attacking the PC's, and the mage casted a manaball at the chopper. He was only allowed to hit the two NPC's leaning out the door and firing at them, because those where the only ones he could see.

If he had used a fireball, anyone inside the interior of the chopper would of been cooked.

In our game we give most of the same penalties to spell casting as we do to ranged attacks. It makes for a nice balance.

The only time you run into trouble with this is with direct area effect spells.

For example, you have a group of bad guys standing near some crates. Some are peeking from behind the crates, some are ducked completely behind the crates, and one or two are out in the open.

The rules are unclear if you role one test against the whole group, or each person individually.

To speed things up, we've had the caster test against one person, and make one
roll taking all penalties as normal against that target. After the net success are determined from that cast, (but before resistance rolls) everyone else in the area of affect that is a valid target tests against those net success.


Hasaku
Still prepping for my first SR4 game, but I'll be ruling AOE spells just like SR3. "Direct" spells like manaball (such a misleading name) require you to see anyone in the area of effect to damage them, because it's more like forking one manabolt to hit them all. You're directly targeting them with the effect, and they must all be within a circle of X radius. I hate the name "manaball" because it implies an effect similar to fireball, where you toss it at a point and it explodes. Hell, I might just rename the spell "Forked Manabolt" to be clear.

Fireball, and other "indirect" spells, do not "target" anyone the way Manabolt and -ball do. What I mean is, you're not specifically directing an effect at their auras. Instead, the real target of Fireball et al is the center point, which you must roll to hit since you're mentally tossing a little ball of fire at it. When the fireball goes off at the target point, everyone within the radius and without cover from that point (victim) is exposed to sheets of magically originated but physically real and undirected sheets of flame. I say magically originated to explain how counterspelling could protect a single victim from the fire but not the defenseless schlub next to him. The counterspelling blocks the flames from touching him, reducing the effects to a mere hot wind.
Kleaner
How do you plan to deal with different targets under different visibility modifiers?

For example, a mage tosses a manaball at two targets one is standing under a street lamp, the other is just outside the light in the dark?

Would you make the mage roll seperate tests for each target?
Rotbart van Dainig
Start with the lowest number of dice, add dice while making one roll only.
FrankTrollman
I actually plan to apply cover penalties as bonus resistance dice for the defense roll. The effect is the same, but it's way faster to adjudicate.

-Frank
Hasaku
But doesn't taking dice away from the mage's cast roll reduce the maximum possible damage he could do? I understand that, on average, taking 3 dice from the mage and giving 3 dice to the target both reduce the DV by 1, but this favors the target in extreme situations (i.e. greater than expected hits). He can now resist more than he otherwise could, if he gets very lucky.
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