I'll even combine this with a use for Mask as opposed to Physical Mask.

Say the runners decide to create a bit of film footage. They cast Physical Mask on a PC to make hime look like a troll (or other disreputable, racist being), then cast Mask on the same PC to make them look like the mark. They cast Invisibilty and Improved Invisibility on the camera men.

They go meet the mark's wife for an amorous afternoon. It looks to the wife like she is with her husband. On camera, it looks like the wife is with a troll and depending on editing, like she was aware/unaware of the cameras recording the incident.

This one is a bit harder to rationalize other than drain considerations of having to recast while on a run every time an astral barrier is encountered.

Organlegging. You have all these Deadly damage bodies, Stabilize them until you get them to where you can properly organleg them. They are still at Deadly damage and incapacitated.

I had a group do this to the gang in Food Fight. They organlegged all but Zany and Wiley. Zany they sold as a meat puppet, Wiley they had conjure spirits that would go free so they could bind. So, I guess as a prelude to slavery, too.

In addition to Drain, it can help you confuse the issue dramatically. For example, you can cover a drone with Invisibility, and have it act as a decoy on one side of a compound. The automated systems will go after it, drawing off the live response teams-- but they won't be able to find it. In the meanwhile, you and your team have a clear field to enter.

None, other than Drain. It gets pretty crazy to cast Inc. Reflexes 3 in the middle of a run, repeatedly.

In addition to what CB said, you can Stabilize a mage who's taken physical Drain damage. Also, remember that these spells aren't just for PC's-- they're spells the PC's are likely to encounter. A DocWagon mage will probably have Stabilize at a reasonable force.

Another trick: if you've got multiple mages, or have access to NPC mages, you can Stabilize the character for later healing. Since you only get one successful attempt at magical healing, you'll get better results if you can use Ritual Sorcery to cast your Heal spell.

First Aid takes time, often more time than a Stabilize spell does. And a trauma patch only works when the first roll has failed, and carries a bunch of penalties all its own.

It does depend on your character concept, but you can get a lot of mileage out of "useless" spells. One character of mine was a mage/beautician, who had both Fashion and Makeover at force 6. She used them as instant disguises for the team, allowing them to totally alter their appearance within seconds. The best part was this: she didn't get hit with a sustaining penalty, and once she removed the astral signatures, there was no trace of magic whatsoever.

True, but is anyone really going to take IR +1 or +2 because of that? No, most people are just going to grin and bare it.

Keep in mind you have a very GOOD point, but your perspective is hardly ever appreciated in-game.

True, this is why I like to have NPCs with spells that PC don’t normally use.

Yeah this is the main advantage, but again it is not something a PC would get unless they are a healer. No?

Again my choice of the word “useless” was poor. My intent with this thread was only to talk about similar spells.

Very good point. The only thing is that this is a complete RP reasoning and lacks practicality. As a GM can you really tell a player “Sorry can’t have improved invisibility, because you went to a community college instead of a university”

In any case I am all for role playing these kinds of aspects, but that is hardly how most people think. In other words since the BBB doesn’t even hint at this aspect of the game, it is left up to the reader to come up with.

While I bet you were not trying to be disrespectful with this comment, please show some more class. Don’t oversimplify the thread by implying I or anyone else here is single or simple minded.

As I mentioned above it is very natural to conclude that some spells are redundant or “useless”. Again I am only talking about spells that share the same function, for example invisibility vs. improved or mask vs., physical mask.

If the book described the spells in a way to explain why a person would take one over the other, that would have been good … not very practical to spend words on this, but it would have helped.

For example take a real world example I told a player once. I had a player once ask me “Why would anyone use anything other than a predator? All the other guns do far less damage.”

Now is my player being an evil number cruncher or is he plain stupid? Of course he is neither one of these. He is simply seeing the situation how it is presented. When I asked him to think of it in real life terms it made more sense. I asked him, why doesn’t everyone walk around with 45 caliber pistol?

Well because there is a culture important to welding a weapon of that much power. Someone see you carrying that weapon and they assume you are a certain kind of person. Is it worth the hassle of carrying that weapon? Once a person understands this it makes more sense to carry a lighter weapon.

Is this a practical game play element to use in a game? It is hard to get this point across to PCs.

In any case you could say the same thing about spells, however the legality is even less clear with spells. All that matter in regards to the law the force, which isn’t an accurate way to think of spells.

The bottom line is that this topic is not about number crunching. In fact I am trying to find a logical reason to NOT do simple number crunching. All in all I wish the BBB would have describe the culture important … I know I am dreaming. Lol

Make sense now Paul?

That is a veeery nice trick. Getting physical and technical observers to register two different versions of reality? Eee-yep, that one's going in the notebook.

It depends. Most SR mages are going to be doing *some* healing, which is why Treat and Heal are such popular choices. Many mages will back that up with a good Biotech/First Aid skill, and might even add a few extras, such as Stabilize or Detox. A support mage would be more inclined towards these spells, as opposed to a front-line combat mage.

Even if your mage isn't a dedicated healer, odds are that your mage will be doing some healing. So, it's not just for dedicated healers. I *will* say that low-utility spells are better candidates to take with the Exclusive and/or Fetish limitation, to reduce the cost-- you get a bit more for your money, that way.

There are other reasons to take the mana version. I'm reminded of something I think was in the CLUE files: a runner team wanted to try and convince a corp suit that he was going insane. So, they cast an illusion of a pink elephant dancing on his desk. The problem was, the mage only had Trid Phantasm; so when the mark panicked, he ran back the security tape and saw the elephant on it. Security immediately figured out that there was a hostile mage nearby, and the team got into a lot of trouble.

Moral of the story: sometimes you *don't* want machines to see the illusions.

He's none of the above, but he's still wrong. Straight-up damage isn't the only element to a gun. If you're not cybered, a Manhunter with an integral laser sight might be a better choice than a useless smartgun link. If you need a hidden piece, a Streetline packing EX-EX can be a nice backup. The Roomsweeper can load the special shotgun ammo, giving you a wider array of options. The Viper Slivergun also packs a lot of nastiness into a small package, particularily if you dikote it and put an oversexed ally spirit into it.

That's the only reason to take *any* spell. I've had mages without any of the holy trinity of magic: manabolt, stunball, and heal/treat. These three are some of the most commonly used spells in the game, but you can make a very functional character without any of them.

If you merge your "character reasons" with tactical choices, you can come up with some very powerful combinations. The mage beautician I mentioned earlier had a bonus to Manipulation spells, so her Fashion/Makeover trick was super-easy for her. She also got a lot of mileage out of Magic Fingers (who needs Throwing Weapons, when you can gently place grenades under their crotch? ) and Physical Barrier (you won't believe what kind of damage ensues when a team of go-gangers crashes into a set of multi-cast Barriers).

This is EXACTLY what I am trying to say.

I don't argue that creative people can make something that seems redundant into something useful … my point is WHY design it that way? Why not make the drain relative to the usefulness of the spell? Is it simply a mistake?

Every time I look at the these kinds of spells it looks wrong. You shouldn't have to be an experienced player to understand things like this.

I guess the best way to describe it is to say that RL isn’t perfect, so why should a game?

Not exactly a mistake. Playtesters cannot cover every possibility that might ever come up in play; so once a game's been released, players are likely to find a bundle of things the playtesters never even thought about. It's also possible that the playtesters found an abusive loophole, and altered the rules to compensate for it. Now, we can't see what originally made the spell so powerful.