No, not the lottery.

It dawned on me the other day just how powerful this spell is, especially if cast against an area that doesn't have spell defense up.

Take a starting mage with 6-6-6 for Sorcery-spell pool-willpower
Cast powerball at 1D using 12 dice
Drain is 3D, with 6 dice usually taking a moderate stun.

With 12 dice, a Body 4 person will likely be dead- okay so far.

But with 12 dice, the mage will on average roll at least one 10 which means *every* object within the area of effect takes deadly damage. No resistance roll. Gone. Every gun, grenade, knife, piece of armor, sidewalk, drone, deck, whatever!

Perhaps even cyberware if you rule that that gets a separate save from the Body of the person with the cyber.

Is this how you folks play it?

Actually, they'll only get a 10 about 2/3 of the time on 12 dice. Still pretty sick, admittedly.

~J

The force of the spell must be at least half the OR to affect an object. Page 183 SR3.

And Powerball only affects things that the mage can see. So the desk is dust, but the gun in the drawer is untouched.

Mages tend to be better off with manaballs (or stunballs) than powerballs. If only because the mages should be targeting the mundanes and let the sammies target the enemy mages.

Nope, by canon if a magicuser casts powerball force 6 on the target at the end of the 1 meter wide hallway, and there are fifteen other people with all sorts of heavy weapons just around the corner outside of sight but well within 6 meters, they aren't touched by the spell in the slightest.

~J

I believe the FAQ was just updated for this where they stated that stuff like that doesn't work. If the guards are in the radius, they're blasted whether the mage can see them or not. This comes from an old rule abuse whereby someone would cover a teammate or someone else they wish to keep alive with their hand, thus "not seeing them" and casting an area effect spell.

The way I believe it should be and the way I play it is that LOS means you must see the target you're aiming for. If you're casting a manabolt, you must be able to see the target you're casting against. Just like you have to be able to see someone in order to shoot them for the most part. However, you don't need to see someone around a corner to blow them up with a grenade if you throw it right, and the same goes for an area effect spell.

You can play it however you want, but if you think about it, this whole "I can't see it, I can't effect it" it pretty damn stupid. "I can't see it, I can't TARGET it" is the rule, as it should be.

The Abstruse One

The "I can't see it, I can't affect it" bit was one of my favourite parts. Not only did it provide one of the coolest differentiations from other games, but also it provided more of a reason to actually take area-effect elemental manipulations.

~J

I know its not canon, but I would think a powerball, yes would affect the gun or people around the corner, the manaball no. The powerball, after all, is physical damage... Just kinda makes sense to me.

powerball doesnt effect the guys around the corner, but fireall sure does

Yeah, I think you've (Abstruse) mistaken "physical effect" with "physical damage". If you think the spell has a concussion like effect, that's an Elemental Manip spell (a common one actually, most games seem to house rule a Concussion/Stun Elem Manip spell even). Powerball is your willing objects to fall apart basically. Nothing explosive-like about it. You're just trying to remove the cosmic elements that hold objects together on everything you can see, that which you can't see isn't effected.

Sphynx

Sphynx

So, if a mage pulverized a car with darkened windows with a powerball, the driver would fall flat on his @ss but be otherwise unharmed (assuming he wasn´t driving very fast)?

While I don´t have any concrete examples I have a feeling that such a rule would lead to trouble and/or abuse.
I suggest the following: If a non-translucent barrier gets obliterated by the spell, so that the mage can see what´s behind it, that stuff is affected too (provided it´s still in the spells radius, of course)

Do you know what is even more sick?

Casting Multiple spells cause the ruling sez you can so blast a poor group of bastards with a 4S Power ball, then use those split dice and blast the bastards with a 4s Mana ball.


Results are sick.

Not really when suffering the conswquences... when splitting dice liek that on one action you have to divide your dice between the 2 spells, and you suffer +2 to the TN and +2 to the DRAIN TN on both spells. Prepare to fall down.