I'm thinking that one meter radius per force point is too much, and should be more akin to one meter diameter per force point...

Lets take an extreme but doable example....

A good mage with sorcery of 6, magic rating of 6, and lets say 6 other bonus dice from various other sources (power foci, totems, spirits) decides to cast a 12 force stun ball.

This ball has a radius of 12 meters, for a diameter of 24 meters. He has 18 dice to cast and decides to withold 8 dice to make the ball have a 20 meter radius. That's a 40 meter diameter.

Which is roughly a 8-9 story building about as wide as a baseball diamond, and he'd still have 10 dice left to pull it off.

Anyone think this is a bit much?

Yes, that's a bit much, but if someone's hauling out that type of firepower, it better be big. Especially considering that, as a magic user, their Body may be lower and, thus, if they screw the drain roll they could be nigh on to dead. The threat of physical wounds has been enough to limit overcasting craziness so far in my games, though that may not be the case for others.

To be fair, he should have a specialization for another 2 dice. I mean, at that point, he's a world class combat mage.

At that point, however, there are some serious LOS issues. Sure, he can pop off a riot control stunball to end all stunballs at the risk of his own life, but how often is that useful to shadowrunners? It only hits those he can see that well.

Here's a question I don't know the answer to. How do you handle casting an AOE spell against opponents with multiple degrees of visibility?

answer:

SHP 1.4

(Section about pool reduction)

I've brought up the AOE spellcasting problem up on another thread. I too have decided to do it by adding visibility modifiers to the resistance test. It made the most sense and seems to fit well with the system.

I... just give characters bonus resistance dice when the pool would be reduced against them specifically. It saves a lot of time and heartache.

-Frank

Thats exactly what I am proposing. But Im going further and do so even when testing against nothing (or the game world). Like a perception test. My gamers always roll their full pool, and I roll against it with the modifiers, so they never know how easy or hard it was to detect something if they didnt detect it.

Which isn't always a good idea and in most cases more time consuming then rolling the different colored dice .

I don't think you get the same probability curves out of the two methods, either. The short simulation I ran had odd things like the chance for a character to have negative successes or more successes than he should have had dice.

Negative hits are 0 hits. You cant get more hits than dice with this method.

Statistically rolling

A) 6 dice instead of 10
and
B) 10 dice and rolling 4 against

is slightly better for the latter one, because of the 0 round effect. If there were negative hits, the outcome would be exactly the same, but as negative hits are rounded to 0, the mean is slightly higher.

No, you can get more hits than you should have had dice. Say you have 10 dice for your test and a 3 die penalty.

7 dice = max 7 hits
10 dice - 3 dice = max 10 hits

Ah ok, thats what you mean.

Thats exactly the ammount that would statistically cancel out with the negative hits. If you want to fix this: Round down to the maximum number that "could" be achieved, just like you round negative hits to 0. Then the statistic outcome of both methods is exactly the same.

But those occasions (both negative and too many hits) are quite rare, so I dont care much about it.

Another way to put that disgusting force 12 spell in to perspective:

A regulation NBA Court is approximately 29 Meters Long by 15 Meters Wide, the force 12 spell would cover almost the entire length of the court, and several rows in to the stands at Mid-Court if the spell were cast on the center of the court, and it would stretch to a high point somewhere over the top of the hanging scoreboard found in most arenas.

This is assuming the caster did nothing to adjust the size of the spell.

im guessing the real issue here is the ability to do this out of char gen. a SR3 char would need to get hold of a force 12 spell first. not something he can do in char gen.

basicly, you would see similar AOE spells in SR3, in theory. only they would be much later in the game, if anyone botherd to learn that strong a spell.

now, doing that with a combat spell isnt that big a issue. doing it with a elemental spell, thats something else (that is, if the elemental maniputaltion spells still exist in SR4). that way you can burn down a building with a single spell more or less...

two versions where they try to cut back on the power of magic, and now this. i realy do wonder...

I'm really not sure what the big deal is. You can get Commercial Explosives right out of chargen, and burn down a whole building without sticking yourself with a crap tonne of physical drain in the process.

The ability to blast everything in a 12m radius sounds big, and in the context of whatever room you happen to be in I'm sure it's huge. But on a battlefield or city-wide scale, it just doesn't rate mentioning.

-Frank

Stunball, manaball and powerball only affect things you can see. Thus casting it inside an apartement building would produce some really weird effects. It's not just like a bomb that goes off. It's like a grenade, except it only effects those places that you can see. Manaball is pretty clear-cut, since you just need to count the living creatures that are both in the radius and within sight. But powerball would leave a very strange pattern of destruction. Everthing you can see would be all torn up, but the carpet on the other side of the couch would be prestine white because you can't see it. Imagine your eyes are a light source. Anywhere that a shadow is cast would be saved.

At least the forensic guys would be able to tell exactly where you were standing when you cast. Probably your height, too.

That's a clear discrimination against dwarves!

Fortunately, there's Levitate - just go to ceiling height and have at it, lol!

But that is true, 'shadowed' area (sotospeak) would be save from the blast, although if I recall, mirrors are fair game when it comes to reflections, yes?

I think so, so don't stand in front of a mirror and cast powerball

Yes, mirrors let you bounce your LOS. That's why little pocket periscopes should be in every mage's inventory.

hmm, i think we need a smiley that covers the term groantastic

Not very logic.

BTW: There is an SR3 remant in the description of changing radius of spells. Of course, withholding dice from the spellcasting test doesnt affect drain, as there is no spellpool anymore.

i used the term grenade to ilustrate that it can hit people behind cover as long as they are within the are of effect of the spell. not that it behaves like a grenade by the rules.

as in, the mage lands a fireball spell inside a room, past the door. this should in SR3 affect anyone hiding to either side of the door as long as they have no cover between them and the "detonation" point of the spell.

if this is no longer true in SR4 then fireballs and similar have realy lost a reason to exist, i may as well go powerball only and spend the rest of the points on something else...

or maybe, more power to the summoner? summon a unbound spirit and tell it to trash everything inside the room. then sit back and watch.

hell, i can now do more with a wellplaced grenade then i can do with magic...

One example of why the physical spells (such as a fireball) will hit a person no matter visibility is on...

195: Combat Spells

Well, I found another section that confirms direct spells work in the way expected, just not something that excludes or includes the physical, indirect spells.

167: On the Manipulation of Magic

i'm sorry, but i have to go with the lines Darkness quoted above. It seems wonky, but if ya can't see what you're filling a room of fire with, ya can't hurt it.

It seems idiotic that its just not considered a burst of energy that is released and fills a set area reguardless if you can see it or not.

Heck based on their logic might as well bring in the old boogie man rule, "If I can't see them they can't see me either" start walking around with a blankie while doing a run and throw it over your head if you see a caster and run by.

Course that can go bad to as every one fights over the blankie or the one person who has it refuese to wash it casue its his good luck blankie

It is a burst of energy, it deliberately states in the magic section that indirects spells create a medium of the energy. By that logic, it's a physical effect that will get you regardless.

Of course, short of that, I never found anything to back up the logic rules-wise. -_-

Wasn't there something for that in SR3 though? I always had that concept in mind when I learned the game, so I had to get it from there first...

SR3 had elemental manipulations, and there where by definition streams or areas of a elemental effect. hell, the non-area ones used more or less the same rules as firearms (flat target number, opponent being allowed to dodge and so on).

ah, SR3 page 182, elemental manipulation spells. second paragraph...

i find it strange that they should have changed all that for SR4...

i dont recall what the SR2 books had to say about elemental area effects but i think they where somewhat similar. but then SR2 had that "nasty" groundig rule. SR1 i cant talk about as i joined late SR2...

Don't forget they cut out the alternative to spirit fighting too, and at this point, that looks like it was a bad idea or else a big fluke. the definition of spells, in this regard, might have gone the same way. >.<

Damn...

As of SR3, yes. No ruling in SR4 that IM aware of.

Indirect combat spells are treated as ranged attacks, so my thinking on it is that you target a point in space and figure up the radius from there. That is to say, fireball will work around corners in my world.

For that kind of drain? It had better.

Yeah, it's an open question whether the fact that an indirect combat spell works "like a ranged attack" (and thus allows a blind fire attack) trumps the fact that i is "LOS spell" (and thus does not).

Both statements are absolutes and neither is listed as an exception to the other. However, it is logical to assume that the ranged combat rules are supposed to take precadence in this instance.

-Frank

I'd let indirect AOE hit everyone in the radius (barrier dependant). I mean, it has a DV of (F/2)+5. A force 5 is going to hurt pretty bad, and a force 12 has a very real chance of killing a starting mage.

Ok on a slightly related note:

Consider for a minute the Fireball Spell

SR3 it is an elemental manipulation that creates fire. There is no indication that it is created with explosive force, but it creates a fixed volume of fire.

SR4 it is a combat spell, that creates fire. Again no indication that it does so with explosive force, though it may not affect targets the caster cannot see in this version.

Now suppose some mage decides to let off a force 6 Fireball (no adjustment to area of effect, yes I think we can agree that this mage is either fireproof or a moron) in the cafeteria of an office building. The cafeteria in question has a seating area that is 4m x 4m, a low wall (just over 1 m tall) separating it from a buffet area wich is 2.5m x 4m, behind the Buffet area is a wall separating the cafeteria from the kitchen. there are open arch doorways to the rest of the building on both walls of the cafeteria dining area, set just on the dining area side of the buffet/dining area separator wall. The ceiling of the cafeteria is a Meta-Freindly 3.5 meters high. The Force 6 fireball goes off with a 6 meter radius (904.32 cubic meters of fire) What gets torched?

EDIT: The question is also what gets torched differently in various editions, and does the spell always produce the full volume of fire and would it spill/flow out in to surrounding unseen areas? Also how much like natural fire would magical fire behave (ie would it tend to rise etc.)

The ball spells do homogenous damage within their area, as opposed to a true explosion that has a decreasing DV the further the target is from ground zero.

This implies (to me) that they're not so much explosions as.... erm.... sudden "bubbles of damage." As such, no chunky salsa from Fireball.

Which is a shame, as I do love a nice fire-roasted salsa.