I have two different questions, and rather than posting two times, I figured I would just ask them both in this one thread.

When I read the warding section, I interpreted that a mage charged 100 per hour for the time that they spent warding, however my friend feels that it is 100 per hour that the ward is up. I find the second interpretation rather... excessive, however I could be wrong.

My second question is this: My friend was in a warded area (Force 5) with four random sustained spell effects running, so he had -8 to all his magic rolls and everyone else had +5 dice to resist his spells. He hit a mage with what was presumably a force 10 spell (he loves never telling me anything... ever. Not even net hits unless I pry it out of him), which he did two times. The first time it failed, the second time, somehow he succeeded. Note that the mage scored 5 hits to resist the attack and the player didn't use edge.

Here is my question for this, when I confronted him about how he could possibly sustain 4 spell effects and blast a mage within a force 5 warded area and still blow him away by saying "Ok, he dies." His retort was that the street samurai could do the same (though I should have pointed out that he couldn't do the same with a -8 penalty to his dice rolls) and that he was 'really specialized' in blowing things away (I fail to see why +2 dice negates -8 ). Not only that, but he blasted the mage two times. The first time failed, the second time he passed. Keeping with his annominity, he never said what his phsyical track was at.

Whats worse, he slaughters force 1 (by binding and forcing them to drain their force to sustain them) spirits to buff the entire party with invisibility, armor buffs, initiative pass buffs, ect. It's fun having a character with four initiative passes that is always invisible and levitating 24/7. I'm worried about him even gaining a little bit more power, just because right now he seems a bit rediculous as it is.

I'm mostly just overwhelmed with how to deal with him, as with most settings "mages are rare" which equates to, the party mage is better than anything short of a major organization. He can pretty much kill off average mages (ones that hover on or a little over 3) in one shot without any stun damage, and in a pinch, he can blow away a mage with 5s in everything in one shot, even with a -8 penalty to spellcasting, the mage having a level 5 ward, and the mage having several points in counter-spelling.

Wards: that's a per hour spent erecting the ward price.

Succeeded on second try: I wouldn't trust this player with a 10+ pole given what little I know about him from your description. A few things:

1) Whenever he casts something, make sure he says at what force. Enforce this strictly. If he doesn't tell you, it's cast at force 1.

2) Make sure you can always see his rolls. Getting 6 hits with -8 dice is possible, but not likely unless you have a high dice pool.

3) Have spirits come looking for him. Torturing force 1 spirits, which is essentially what forcing them to burn out through sustaining amounts to, is likely to eventually attract the ire of a free spirit or two.

4) Always know what his physical and stun tracks are at. When he soaks, look at the dice. You'll know how many hits he needs based on his force, and if he somehow manages to roll 3 sixes but still soak a force 10 mana ball completely you'll know something's up.

"Mages are rare" does not automatically mean that the party mage is king of the hill. Rare doesn't mean weak.

Don't accuse the guy of cheating outright, because maybe he really is just lucky. But if you're watching die rolls and see some funky things happening you've got two options: First, you can confront him and tell him to cut it out or go away. Two, you can cheat right back. If he constantly gets two more hits then he rolled, the opposition should constantly get three more hits then they rolled.

i'm pretty sure it's 100Y per hour it takes to create the ward, but i could be wrong. as for the other problem... you need to put this player on a chain and jerk it some. you need a) a copy of his sheet, and b) to see every die roll he makes, because the player is cheating. it sucks, but you're basically going to have to take care of every aspect of bookkeeping for this guy for a while.

also, i think you may have misinterpreted how wards work. wards don't create a field inside which it's hard to cast magic; they create a wall that is hard to cast magic through.

as far as the spirits go, i think you again need to take control of the player's bookkeeping. every one of those spirits he binds costs 500Y. you should start keeping track of when he actually binds these spirits; remember, they can only spell bind for a single day. you might also make him limit the number of hours per day he can spend binding spirits (it takes an hour per point of force); normal people don't spend twelve hours in the basement playing with magical paraphernalia.

Maybe give him a notoriety rating just for the spirit world, and increase it by one for every 5 or 10 spirits he kills. When he summons a spirit make a notoriety check for him (notoriety + spirit's force). If he gets a hit the spirit resists as much as possible. For bound spirits that would basically just involve them rolling their edge to resist the binding. Force 1 spirits wouldn't be that big of a deal probably, but later when he tries to summon higher force ones it could slap him with some heavy drain. Also have them do everything they can (within their intelligence rating) to twist his commands if they make any hits on the notoriety test. For example if he commands them to attack someone and the spirit has an AoE effect, it should try and catch him in the area.

Once a month make a notoriety check for him. The number of hits times two is the force of the spirit that comes gunning for him. The first couple will probably be weak enough that he nukes them into obkivion, but as his notoriety grows so will his enemies, and as their force grows their intelligence will also grow.

And whatever you do, DO NOT give him karma awards for defeating the spirits that come looking for him, as that will just give him a reason to keep doing it.

It sucks having one bad apple.
Have you tried beating the stupid out of him yet?

I'd say the Spirit Bane Quality is a gimme at this point, but if I was a GM, and had a player trying to be as subversive as this guy is, I'd go to work on him. If he's in the Barrens, I'd let him "bump" into a pissed off Free Spirit, something old and mean. All Wendigos are Awakend and evil, and cannibals, and that always makes for a trippy ass Run. Disappering Slum Residents, Tribe of Wedigos, bad magic. If they are doing Corp Runs, use Ultrasound, and have some sort of Magical Research Facility on the Campus. Yeah, Mages ARE rare, but there is enough of them around that entire schools exist to train them, and courses of study

I despise your player. I hate guys who try to manipulate rules. I hate guys that cook spirits. I hate guys who think they are THE Uber Mage....and I mucho hate the guy that spams Levitate/Invisibility on his whole crew 24/7.

/rant off

I would go for the Sprit Bane, but put an extra evil twist on it.

His constant use of the burning out sprits, starts to become an addicition, he starts to fail rolls if he doesn't burn a sprit in this way, etc.. But it becomes worst as he finds that force 1 sprits just aren't cutting it any more, he needs more of a rush, so he has to start summoning stronger and stronger sprits.

This plus this kind of burning of sprits whould make him a walking background count. As suggested Wendigos would love to snack on this sadistic moron. Remember that Wendigos have a "taste" for evil people more than good people for some reason. And as I remember convert other humans to being canibals and then feast on the canibals themselves. You could run a good story arc as one converted him to the "dark" side.

That or just have a drop bear get him

Nevermind watching him. Nevermind adding Negative Qualities he won't play. Just kick him outta the group. It's obvious that he's the worst kind of player, and he's just gonna screw things up for the rest of your group. Drop an orbital cow on his character, tell him to get the fuck outta your group, and all will be serene.

They have a taste for "corrupted" sprits, I would rule that torturing spirts in this way would be the same as eating humans. Both should be seen as morally repugnant, expect in the most extreme circumstances.

Another thing that I'd like to point out is that you as the gm need to know the magic rules better. You shouldn't be depending on him to tell you that he needs a certain number of hits to be invisible to technological devices.
So "he's read the entire book" so what, so have I and I'll bet anything that we would have very different interpretations of what various rules mean. Enforce your rules, don't depend on hinm to tell you what the rules are.

where is the stuff about wendigos preferring to eat certain types of people coming from?

pg 294 4th Ed

Wendigos are EVIL. I'm working on sort of a transition-campaign now, where the antagonist is a Wendigo. The group hasn't seen much in terms of Awakened Critters, so this seems like a good time to do it.

My group is leaving Denver, and heading to Seattle via road. I (as their new fixer in Seattle) am going to advise them that things are a little hot around the Seattle border right now, and get them to lay low for a few weeks, in the boonies, in some little 1 Horse town in Wyoming, and then hit them with a couple of one-shot runs, one of which is going to involve a rash of missing persons, and some sort of cult lead by a Wendigo. I was going to make him (The Wendigo) a sort of travelling Druid/Shaman, who put up a good front, but was eating kids or something on the DL....but ended up liking the idea of the Traveling Druid too much, and made him an NPC instead.

Anyway, Wendigos rock.

Woah, Monnock, you are the GM. That means what you say goes, period. If your player doesn't like it he can go somewhere else. You need to regain control from this guy. I agree with the statement above: he tells you the number of hits and you tell him what happens. He has no right to know how many hits you rolled or what the NPC's stats are. You, however, have the right to change the stats of an NPC or the hits rolled on a particular test anytime if you so choose. The only other "shame on you" I'm going to say is: you should have read the whole book before GM'ing.

Now, that being said, RPGs are not about the GM "vs" the players. It is about telling a story, and having fun. Keep those things in mind as your run your sessions. Alter things as needed to ensure that:
1) The story remains consistent, and interesting
2) Everyone is having fun

You didn't state it explicitly but I get the impression that other players in the group might be annoyed with this guy as well. No one likes to have their characters abilites berated by someone bragging how "awesome" their guy is. So, here's my advice: read the rules, and crack down on this guy. Start with just the Magic Chapter if it seems like a big deal. Know the rules. Stop the game and check them if you need to (I do it all the time). Develop your understanding/interpretation of the rules, let the group know what your understanding is, then stick by it. Your ruling is final.

If things still continue to get out of hand, and your player keeps nagging, complaining, and railing on you, you might not have any other choice but to drop the "GM hammer" on him. If he is ruining everyone else's fun it might be time for him to run afoul of Lofwyr in human form making an S-K Prime "inspection." Have him do his muncher crap, then have Lofwyr strip aside his petty magic, then cast "some spell you don't know." Have him roll his Willpower + Counterspelling (just for kicks) then simply say to him: "Ok you die."

I just thought of something else that might help you: remember Astral Space. Half a dozen spells sustained by half a dozen spirits 24/7 is a fragging astral lighthouse! Remind the player that if he has the resources to summon legions of spirits to do his bidding than the megacorporations he is going against can do the same thing and much more.

Strolling into some corp facitility with all of that magical "ordinance" will send every Watcher spirit they have on patrol screaming back to their masters. Then its all about the Security Mage(s) calling in their legions of Bound Spirits to smack your group around.

Hell, who needs legions? One Force 10 spirit (i have no problem buying the concept that the security mage for a major facility has initiated 4 times) will slow anyone down, especially if he hits first.

Force 10 Spirit....you know, I didn't realize how scary that number is until I wrote out it's stats, and rolled a couple of F10 Fireballs. He melts faces.

I just want to point out to all the commentary about my lack of reading on this subject, I do admite that I haven't read the entire book from cover to cover, however I have looked over everything that has come up by glancing at it. Part of this came from running a game the week after I got the book (and that session I had just got it the day before), so I've been a little behind.

At this point I think I've found everything but, at least for me, there are a lot of "one liners." Like the rule for the max armor you can wear before you take penalties is burried in a paragraph. Comming from D&D made me... er, I guess dull (?) to the finer details, when its such a rediculously easy system in comparison.

When someone disputes me in their area (like a mage in the mage department), I figure I can trust them enough to know more about their area than I know about it from passing. I was hoping that we could all learn the game together, but it only takes one bad apple to throw a wrench into that idea. For anyone here who has played Dungeons and Dragons, he had convinced everyone that touch spells (all of them, like cure whatever wounds, Heal, ect.) could affect everyone who he touched. Everyone thought this was stupid (and defied all our experiances with DnD), but I was finally the one who had to look it up and disprove it.

So far everything that I've checked up on him commenting on has been wrong. Every... single... thing. Heck, just saturday he was arguing with me when I said responce limited system, even though I had posted my 2 on a related topic involving how that worked with responce going down from too many programs. I took a look at the wards section and saw the passage that 'gave me the impression' that it was not an area, but he argued tooth and nail that he read it right (as he had just read it) when it came up, so I figured that there was no way he could be so bad as to misinterpret something that he just read when he berrates us for not reading everything.

I like the ideas that you guys are given, especially the ones using the special version of noteriety, just because that gives me something tangable to use without just randomly pulling out the baseball bat out of the blue (well, it's still out of the blue, but only for him).

To add to Shrike's response about the spirits sustaining the spells. Either.
A) He's having the spirit is casting the spell on the players, in which case it's limited to force 1, or force 2 if overcast and easily broken or seen through.

or
B) He's casting the spell himself and having the spirit sustain it. A force 1 spirit uses up 1 task for every combat turn that it sustains the spell for him. That's 3 seconds. (p179 2nd paragraph) So even if the spirit owes him 10 tasks, it run out after 10 combat turns (30 seconds).

If a spirit casts a spell it is limited to rwice the spirit's force. If a spirit sustains a spell it lasts for a few combat turns.

But guys, he is using spell binding, which IIRC does not have the force limit.

I was under the impression that the spirit is the one who cast the spell if it's being used for Spirit Binding. If that's not the case, my point is entirely invalid.

Shrike30: It could be the one casting the spell, like the Spirit of Man with one of its special abilities, however as far as I can tell, all Spell Binding (got the wording mixed up last time) does is take the burden off of the mage that bound it.

I find this quote terribly ironic in the context of my mage:

For purposes of Spell Binding, the spirit's force does not matter when determing the force of the spell it can sustain; the mage casts the spell at whatever force he wants and then passes it over to the spirit for it to sustain. The spirit's force merely determines the number of days that the spell will last.

The spirit isn't doing any casting in this case. If you look at the description it says that the spirit must be of the appropriate type for the spell it will Bind (i.e. fire for combat, air for illusion), but the spirit of man is the only type of spirit that has a spellcasting ability.

One thing I would note for this player though is the sidebar on page 178 for bound spirits. It mentions that if the player is abusing his bound spirits (it specifically mentions Spell Binding here), then the spirits will struggle against his will while they are performing active services such as spell sustaining. This imposes a -2 dice pool modifier on all tests while his spirits are active. He might think twice about Spell Binding when his swarm of force 1 spirits are eating his dice pools away to nothingness.

That's a rule I'd start applying, if he's obviously burning up his "karma" with the Astral Plane this fast.

On a related note, invisible, levitating characters are very inviting targets for airspace defense systems...

"Sir, the radar's picking something up buzzing the building, but we can't get a visual on it."
"It's probably another one of those damn ruthenium-coated rotodrones. Switch the helipad guns over to Stick-n-shock, and give it a burst..."

Ah, that's a good point Zeric. I had told him that I was using that rule (because I knew when I read something along the lines of "prevent abuse" that it applied to him), but for some reason I didn't think that his use of spell binding would count as them being active, though that makes sense. Then again, in a way it negates that use of spell binding. Hm...

I've already changed how spell assisting works with him, because when I saw him having 3 bound fire elementals and talking about his 30 some-odd spellcasting dice to use when he wanted to nuke someone, I decided to change it. Basically I made it so that the spirit rolls its Force attribute and he adds the number of hits to his spellcasting checks, seemed a lot more balanced to me. After that he dropped his bound spirits and commensed Plan B, I guess.

In this case I would rather not just make bound spirits useless to him, I just wish he would stop trying to take advantage of the system.

I was wondering: can you use wards to contain things within them, as a sort of astral cage? And can you change who they contain on the fly? Say I wanted to cage a swarm of insect spirits with a ward; could I change which insect spirit to let through so that I could walk them and let them hunt orphans and then cage them again?

Well, most spirits can return to their metaplane and then pop back out on the other side of the ward (well, in SR3, they could). Flesh form insect spirits, other dual-natured creatures, astrally projecting mages, and watchers could be caught in a ward. But wards don't "pop up", they take hours to make. You can change permissions, IIRC.