You can cast the spell up to the force you have learned, therefor with a force 6 version of the spell, you could cast 6, 5, 4, etc. You also choose the damage level, i.e., L, M, S, D at this time as well. With combat spells the damage level is usually up to the caster, so you can cast your Force 6 manabolt at 6D, 6S, 6M, etc.

Yes. You can use up to your total sorcery skill and your total spell pool (not sorcery pool) to cast the spell. Please note that any dice allocated to spell defense from the spell pool are not available for cast. Please also note that the sorcery skill, like the spell pool, only refreshes once a combat round. This means that if your mage wants to cast a spell on the first phase of the round, and then another spell on the second phase, he has to split his sorcery skill and spell pool between the two castings, unlike most other skills. Also please note that this is for normal spells. Elemental Manipulation spells are handled like ranged attacks using the sorcery skill as the ranged skill, adding spell pool as normal.

Damaged Level of spells that deal damage is staged up 1 for every 2 net successes on the casting roll. Power is not increased.

Damage level is chosen at time of casting. Number of boxes of damage is determined by damage level, not spell force.

These spells have a target number. The mage cast the spell, and then when you need to know if someone resists, you roll the appropriate attribute (identified in the spell description) against a TN of the spell's force. If the victim receives more successes, he sees through the spell. If the mage has more successes, the spell holds and the victim is fooled.

Willpower and and spell pool left over from spell casting and defense.

Drain is calculated by taking the force and the damage level the spell was cast at, dividing by 2, rounding down, and then adding the modifiers. For instance, in your example above, if the mage cast Manabolt (which has no modifiers) at force 5 with a damage level of M, he would resist (5/2, rounded down)(damage level) drain, or 2M. If he cast Manaball (which has a damage level +1 modifier) at force 5 with a damage level of M instead, it would be (5/2, rounded down)(damage level +1) drain, or 2S.

Hope this helps.

You select the force of the spell as you cast it up to the maximum that you know. The maximum force you can know at character creation is six. For a combat spell, there is almost never any reason to cast it at a force less than maximum for reasons that will become clear below.

Yes, you use the Sorcery skill (or spell casting specialization of sorcery)+spell pool dice (if any) to cast the spell.

First you compare the number of successes you have with the number of successes on the resistance check. For every two net successes you have, you increase the damage code by one. If the defender ties or exceeds your successes, then the spell is resisted. So yes, the damage does scale up.

No. You pick the base damage code when you cast the spell. This is also the base damage code you have to resist drain against so be careful. The force of the spell is the target number the other guy has to roll on his resistance check. Thus the higher the force the better. This is why you should almost always toss attack spells with forces of six or higher.

Min-Max tip: Consider getting your attack spell fetish linked and apply the fetish to the effective force of the spell. This makes the effective force 5 for purposes of drain while it is still a force 6 spell in all other respects. This will make your drain rolls much easier.

Invisibility, Improved Invisibility, and Physical Masking are all indirect illusions (and indirect illusions are IMHO one of the more broken of the spell categories). The caster rolls against a target number of four and the GM notes the successes. Anyone that sees the effect gets to make a resistance check using their intelligence with a target number of the spell's force. That means that if you get 8 successes on an Improved Invisibility spell (even at force one), then a normal person even with a six intelligence can never penetrate it. That is one (of many) problematic aspects of this....but that is the official way it works.

You roll your willpower plus spell pool (if any) to resist drain. For every two sucesses on this roll, you reduce the drain damage code (usually stun, but it can be physical in some cases) by one. If you scale past light, then you take no drain (no damage).

Your target number is the force of the spell divided by two round down. This is where my min-max tip from above comes into play. A fetish linked force six manabolt has a drain target number of 2 while one that does not has a target number of three.

The damage code you must drain is determined by the spell (usually medium but sometimes serious or even deadly). For most combat spells, it is determined by the damage code that you attempt to inflict. If you throw a deadly manabolt at someone, you must resist deadly drain.

Some spells are harder to drain than normal. For example, Physical mask is +1 M IIRC. That means, you take medium drain (as a damage code) but you add one to the drain target number. Thus a Physical Mask spell with a force of 6 would have a target number of 4 to resist drain rather than the more normal 3. Likewise some spells are easier to drain. Stunbolt, for example, has -1 (Dmg). This means that the damage code you must drain against is the damage you inflict (like a manabolt) but because you are only doing stun damage, this spell is easier to drain. For example a force 6 stunbolt would have a target number of 2 to drain rather than the expected three.

Finally some spells cause more drain damage than normal. This is the normal case for area effect attack spells (like Mana Ball). Manaball has a -/(Dmg+1) drain code. That means that the target number is what you expect, but you drain at one level higher than the damage you try to inflict. So a serious Manabolt at force six would have a drain target number of 3, but you would have to resist deadly rather than serious stun.

I hope this helps and makes things clearer.

-Polaris

This is not necessarily true. While you do lose any Sorcery dice that have been assigned to Spell Defense for the remainder of the round, the Sorcery skill itself does not act like a Pool in other ways.

For example: Dan the Man has Sorcery of 6 and a Spell Pool also of 6, and he has assigned 4 dice to Spell Defense (2 Sorcery and 2 Spell Pool). Assuming Dan can act twice this turn (he rolled 11 on initiative), he could cast his 6S Manabolt during the first pass using his 4 Sorcery dice (6 - 2 for Spell Defence) and up to 4 of his Spell Pool. Let's say that Dan uses 2 dice from his Pool to help him cast the Manabolt.

On the next pass, Dan wants to cast Invisibility. He can use his Sorcery skill of 4 (he still doesn't have the 2 that he assigned to Spell Defence), augmented by the remaining 2 dice from his Spell Pool (if desired) to cast this spell.

The general rule for Pools is that you can not assign more dice to a task from a Pool than you do from the actual skill involved. Nowhere in canon is there an exception listed for the Spell Pool.

Personally I house rule Spell Defense so that it is solely a function of the Spell Pool, unrelated to the Sorcery skill whatsoever, but this is a house rule.

This is true. That's why the general rule for Pool use applies.

That being said, I intensely dislike the way the inclusion of Spell Defence in the Sorcery skill changes the way the skill is used in comparison to every other skill in Shadowrun. This is one of the reasons why I instigated my house rule. Another is that it stops characters from walking around in 'default mode' with 12+ dice for Spell Defence. The absolute maximum one can use for Spell Defence in my system is equal to the character's Spell Pool.

I didn't mention that because it put needless complications into a relatively strtaight-forward answer. I have both seen multiple spells cast, and have done so myself when I played, but it is definitely a rarity when it occurs.

I was going to say the same thing, almost word-for-word.

Nothing, AFAIK, will modify your target number for casting spells, but a good Magic background skill is often used in my games to know what spell an enemy mage may have just cast and also to recognize things like foci and wards. Also, a Spell Design background knowledge can help your target numbers for designing spells. You can do without that knowledge, but if you have it can help you out a lot.

-- Dash --