@James McMurray: The fact that a GM can balance things is no excuse for poor game design.

If you say that sending a force 9 spirit at them is like sending milspec vehicles at the party, then consider that any of the shaman sample characters could summon a force 9 spirit given use of their edge. The sheer fact that the comparisson is being made is indicative that magic is too powerful, and the fact that a completely normal street-level character can summon one means that it's not as unreasonable as fighting opponents with milspec gear.

I personally have not seen anybody getting those rules wrong. Many of the points are fine and I completely agree with them, I have a few counter-points however:

• 1: Invisibility does go a long way, however, particularly when it's backed up by the concealment critter power and a bit of stealth.
• 4: PCs go around in a group and have spell defense from the mage, enemies don't nessecarily have such a luxury.
• 6: This is exactly what I meant when I gave my 'shaman summons a high force spirit' example. Once the PC mage summons a big spirit, either it's fair game for the enemies to do it (making the sammy useless) or the PC mage keeps doing it and thrashing the opposition (making the sammy useless). The same goes for using mind control on the party and similar, reacting to magic with enemy magic just makes the PC mage more important and the rest of the party unnessecary.
• 9: A watcher spirit can warn you if you're about to go through a ward and not percieving.

All of those security measures sound great... Closing doors? Who'd have thought of that? [/tongue=cheek] Anyhow, I wasn't saying that mages could do anything, only that sammies do tend to be made redundant by them (or that often you'd be better-off with a second mage rather than a sammie). Once you start adding hacking and bypassing skills then you start ending-up with a hacker or covert ops rather than a sammie, which I didn't think mages were completely ready to take-over the position of just yet (maybe once the magic book comes out).

Let's see. Other security tactics against magical threats:

* The best, cheapest defense against a spellcaster is to be out of LOS. The real reason for your security guards to have ultrasound goggles isn't to spot the invisible mage; it's so they can still shoot the runners after they toss their cans of hot smoke.

* Drones drones drones. And automated defenses. Yes, they can be targetted with indirect combat spells, but those are a lot less efficient.

I can just see it.

"What? A mage? I can take him. I'm just going to hide in this Trashcan, and get my drones to frag his ass."

*after several minutes of fighting later*

"Ha! Fragged him!"

*trash can opens and grenade falls in*

"Gah!"

*trashcan closes. Boom*

Bahaha!

i think it's important to note that mages usually suck on defense, so when those force 9 spirits are running around, they may have a better chance at damaging it, but they also will suffer the most being hit by it. but hey this argument has been going on forever in every edition. if it seems like such a huge deal, there's always CP 2020.

If the mage wants to keep counterspelling up on his teammates, he needs LOS to them, right?

You know what also works real well with LOS? Hand grenades

Riggers owning mages? Sortof, I think some people calling this are remembering holdovers from 3rd edition too.

If the rigger's out on the job (in an armored van or trash can) then the mage can search for him using a watcher then send a spirit to chow on the rigger's meatbod. If the rigger's sitting back behind a ward then there may be more problems, but wards aren't completely unbreakable. The fact that the mage who set-up the ward will know about it merely means that you can't take the rigger out too soon.

Mages are also not completely incapable of taking-out drones. The easiest way to take drones out is probably with elemental-attack wielding spirits. Elemental attacks arent's spells so the high OR has no effect. Using an electricity attack, a force 6 air spirit has a good chance of taking-out a steel lynx for a few rounds with one attack, and probably will do if the drone is unaware of the attack (see below on concealment). Using fire or cold damage you probably have a better chance of destroying the drones. A force 5 air spirit does on-average over 5 damage to a steel lynx with a fire or cold attack (13 dice attack, 4 successes being harsh, 3 dice dodge, 1 success, 3 net = DV 8, 4 body + half of 9 armor give 8 dice to resist, 3 successes being generous, modified 5 damage), so with average rolls the steel lynx is disabled in 2 shots.

Concealment is enough to make it very unlikely that drones will be able to detect a metahuman. A force 3 spirit using concealment, combined with the fact that you're a metahuman so the drone is on -3 dice, is enough that a steel lynx is on 0 dice to detect you (all it takes is a tiny bit of stealth). If you make that a force 6 spirit then even a really perceptive rigger (perception 6) has a pool to detect you of 0.

@Shrike30: Hand-grenades have a ballistic arc though, so there may be problems if you're trying to use them in areas with low ceilings.

I may not have seen those errors as I've only recently returned from a gap on the boards. I've only seen stuff in the games I ran a few months back where I was pretty careful with the rules.

High infiltration skills won't get you undetected through a closed door either, so I don't see why invisibility and concealment should.

It's not that easy, giving them magical defenses means having a mage. Mages have big implications in that they can often summon spirits (why not force 9 ones?) ETC. Also, is it realistic that every encounter have a mage sitting around, or perhaps just some aspected guy with counterspelling 5, with every group of enemies if you don't want it to become a cakewalk. Sooner or later, it gets unrealistic. You may be OK with those levels of unrealism in your game for the sake of balance, but not everyone is.

I didn't say relying on watchers for astral defense, i said having them tell you when you're about to walk into an astral barrier. Really, unless your DM is the sort who asks for a roll to notice a brick wall then I think it's a non-issue. If it's destroyed by a patrol then you're informed of the patrol, which is also important so that's cool.

'Sammie' may well mix with other archetypes well, I never disputed that, but the problem is that once they do that they're no longer sammies. A certain amount of combat ability is to be expecteed of any runner, so is a hacker with a smartlink really a hacker/sammie?

The problem being raised here is that sammies, people dedicating their bodies to combat advancement through cybertechnology, are out-done. The complaint is that just advancing combat ability through cybertechnology has no chance to shine, to which the suggestion of changing character concept to include hackine and other tasks isn't really an answer.

Arena? Waffle-stomped? Interesting. I'm not overly surprised though. Who survives an arena has never been a measure of who has the most powerful character, it's a measure of who is able to seem least threatening. If kill count is an issue then it's also a matter of who looks the most squishy. Mages are better in 1-on-1 or where they can pick their fights by taking advantage of astral scouting and similar, perhaps even engaging by hiding away somewhere and summoning spirits from the astral.

'Waffle stomp?'
Is that a tactic or a general term?

I'd also like to revisit the idea that there's no such thing as perfect balance in a complex system. Currently the mage is seemingly on top of the heap in several different aspects. However, if you attempt to balance them without being Ugulu, Great God of Games all you'll do is bump someone else to the top of the heap (probably sammies or riggers if it's a combat-centric game).

The only way to have actual balance in a complex system is to have a group of people dedicated to that balance and willing to police itself.

@Jaid: An upgraded drone can roll one more die by default? Nice, I guess I'll have to advise using a force 4 spirit.

Using teamwork, a bunch of drones working together, each rolling 0 dice with each success adding to the leader's pool, is going to result in a total pool of 0 dice for the primary drone. GO TEAMWORK!

My point about not having an arc for grenades was intended as separate, but if the drones are happy to lob grenades around then a spirit would happily sit on one of the drones.

A force 5 air spirit rolls 8 dice to dodge. A steel lynx rolls 6 dice to hit, and they need 5 successes to do enough damage to get past immunity (with an AR or LMG). If they use a narrow burst then they'll probably miss, if they use a wide burst then they still need lots of successes to get past the immunity.

@Nim: The sensor test is a perception test by default, perception is just subbed for pilot rating (the stat which always subs for attributes) in the case of drones. The fact that drones have been poor at deteting metahumans has been around since previous editions, so I don't see why they'd magically fix it now (they had signature 6 in 3rd edition, and IIRC that fact was added in a supplement).

The remenants of the rigger's aura are bound to be on the drones. It may require somethign better than a watcher, but most spirits have assensing so sending them out searching with an image of the rigger's aura should suffice. Still, if the rigger can be hidden undetectably in a trash can then I don't see why the mage can't be, and spirits probably have less troubble checking inside trash cans (fly through them) than drones (no current drones have arms). Of-course the drones could just blow-up every trash can around, but that's likely to prove unpopular with lone-star.

Of-course using the search power may not be feasable given time constraints, but it's not nessecary for the mage to kill the drones.

As for attacking from a position of strength ETC, the fact that mages have abilities which allow them to do this rather easily can't be ignored. The sammie may be able to put a bullet through the mage's head from half a click away, but the mage can sit in the astral with his meat bod on the other side of the world and summon spirits to kill the sammie.

@James McMurray: It's true that mages can protect multiple assets, but we were talking about mooks having spell defense against mind control. That's not possible without a mage present.

Runs requiring a mage are rare enough that people are paying for the fact that a mage is on the team? Woot, now the mage is asking for his own premium and getting more money than the rest of the team. Otherwise, they just logically take the normal runs which are cake-walks for the mage.

Perhaps that level of modification does make a hacker/sammie, but it's still not a sammie. Lets say the new guy has asked to play a sammie and you give him a character who can hack into fort knox. He'd complain that it wasn't what he asked for, yes? Thus it's not a sammie. As an aside, with improved ability for 0.25/rank on technical skills I wouldn't be surprised if sammie/hackers they were out-shone by adept/hackers. Hackers only really need a 0.2 essence datajack in terms of cyberware, so it's not completely incompatible with being an adept.

Changing character concepts is essentially what's happening if you're adding hacking skills. I cite my 'new guy asks for a character' example above. Sure, you can explain to him that pure sammies are weak, but the fact remains that if you give him what he asks for (a sammie) then his character can expect to be out-shone by the adept and other characters.

I didn't say you needed to be ignored in an arena, you only need to seem less of a threat than others. You just need to be shot at second rather than first.

The rigger is a city away? The mage can just as easily operate from a city away, thus the drones and spirits have a battle-royale and both sides are safely tucked-away in neighbouring cities.

If the mage tries the assensing trick to find the rigger's aura, then a search for that aura on drones other than those fighting will probably reveal the nearest drone in the daisy-chain to also have his aura. From there the mage can just destroy a daisy-chain drone or try and search further back up the line to find the rigger's meatbod. The rigger doesn't have any similar way to find the magician's meatbod, however.

Well, to argue that balance is impossible is a bit premature. I don't think they've even tried balancing it. What mages are able to do is dictated more by the shadowrun background than balance. The problem is that it can be perfectly balanced until you look at the full range of abilities open to the mage. Astral perception/projection/assensing/spirits ETC. Mages get so much of that for only 15BP that it's almost unbelieveable, but if it were more expencive then mages who don't know to use the full array of abilities would be out of pocket. IE: I think it is fairly balanced, but only if the mage doesn't know what they're doing.

I think the soloution to this problem is obvious.

Forgoe availability restrictions on equipment and give a "Sammie" multiplier on nuyen of about 5x for people who make dedicated Street Samurai.

Sure, the mage is summoning Force 9 spirits, but the sammie is crammed to 0.01 Essense full of deltaware and is using military hardware. "Balance" restored.

I agree with James that no system is perfectly balanced, and for any complex system, a lot of the balance comes from how the game is run, not just how the rules are written.

Now, that said, I think it's fair to say that some systems have more balance 'cooked in' than others do. And well-considered rules make the GM's job of maintaining balance much easier Sometimes, it's worth changing rules to accomplish this...

Though I disagree with Lilt's argument that SR4 mages totally overpower / render irrelevant gun-bunny characters, I do think there are some problems. Specifically, I'm not happy with how easy it now is to summon high-Force spirits. In canon up to this point (at least, in all of the games I've played in, and in the novels I've read) summoning a powerful spirit was always something done with a certain reluctance and only when the situation was fairly desperate, because it was a dangerous undertaking. The new mechanics don't bear that out. You can look at that as bad game balance, or just as rules not doing a good job of modeling the setting. Either way, I think there is room for improvement there

My biggest gripe (most of the time) with the new way magic is handled is that magical healing can now fix physical drain. In many ways that makes casting and summoning at higher than your magic rating smarter than casting at lower. In other words, if you have magic 6 and cast fireball 6 you'll take stun damage, which you're stuck with unless you rest. If you instead cast fireball 7 you'll do a little more damage, take physical damage, and be able to heal the damage afterwards. In previous editions overcasting was dangerous, now it's common practice.

Just to clarify: I was not trying to turn this into another one of those mages vs samurais threads. Those have been done to death many times before. I was actually looking for suggestions:

• How do I make scenarios where the sams shine?
• How do I make life more challenging for the mages without making life harder for everyone else? (In the past this could easily be handled through background count, but there are no rules for this any more.)
• Does anyone think the regenerating rules make it too easy for mages to kill to the tiger shifter, while being scary hard for everybody else?
• Does anyone think the immunity rules make it too (comparitively speaking) easy for mages to kill the high force spirit, while being scary hard for everybody else?
• Does anybody have suggested modifications to make it harder (though not impossible) for mages to summon those really high-force spirits? (This might eliminate the need to address the previous question.)

admitedly my experince in SR4 is small so far, but I haven't had any issues with mage balance yet. I'm mean sure they are powerful, but so are grenades. And yeah sure spirits are powerful, but maybe I just run in a different way, but about the only people who seem to have spirits out doing the fighting while the summoner is in no threat land is the sec mages.

The team mage is with the team in the thick of things, so yeah that spirit of his is scary, but so far the opposition ignores it as much as possible and redoubles there efforts to drop the summoner, which usually gets rid of the spirit.

Now concealment I can kind of see as a problem since it is so much better than the stealth skill, I really don't have an issue yet with it but it you do. I'm make concealment a test dice equal to the spirits force and each hit removes 1 die from a perception test.

Also if you have an issue with real high force stuff make a house rule that you can throw spells and summon spirits to magix x 1.5 not x2. Which is where every other max attribute/skill works out to. Or for spirits I'd be willing to say they always use edge to resists summonin unless the summoner has spirit affinity.

Has anyone considered adding in mundane spirit hunting/ghost hunting tricks to be effective against spirits?

For instance, shotgun shells with rock salt?(You need to have the armorer skill for reloading, or to buy it from a talismonger) Charms to cushion damage? Charms and fetishes to attach to melee weapons?

In addition, do some research on exorcist activities from Ancient religions, and even modern ones, can give you some ideas. Put a few mechanics in, and you have weapons mundanes can use against spirits. Just make the weapons less effective than Weapon Foci and Spells, so the mages still have their starlight shine.

@X-Kalibur: Actually, an exact interpretation would say that anybody who touches the drone leaves their aura on it. That aura can then be read with assensing.

Sure, you can lend your drones to a drone petting zoo but I find it relatively unlikely that a drone will have many signatures on it other than its current owner. if there are a bunch of auras on the drones, you can look at all of them and see which ones are commonly shared.

@Apathy: The sammie isn't going to shine by virtue of being a sammie. He can shine by virtue of being that extra man there, who's able to do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Sure, have it involve blowing the heads off some guards.

This isn't a strictly mage versus sammie problem, but if you do want to make things more difficult for the mage then have a street gang who tend to have developed the magic resistance quality or something.

@Shinobi Killfist: Completely valid points about going for the summoner of the spirit. Although not all security forces will have the conviction to go for an invisible enemy when somethign with a good attack skill is sending 5P blasts reduced by half armor at them, that's probably their best bet.

I don't quite agree with taking the nerf bat to concealment, however. What you're suggesting is effectiely making it 1/3rd as effective. Concealment is usually fine, equivalent to a boost to the character's infiltration skill equal to the spirit's force, and in-keeping with the power possible from other service options. It only becomes a big deal when you're dealing with enemies with low dice pools.

If you're going to say that a drone Sensors test is the equivalent of a Perception test (and so affected by things like Conceal appropriately), then things like the Enhanced Vision mod (bonus dice for Perception checks) should be applicable. Networks of drones should be providing teamwork bonuses, or having each drone getting it's own Sensors test.

I am not inclined to say that Perception and Sensor are the same test, if modifiers like "is metahuman" exist.

Is Concealment a Mana or Physical power?

I think you mean +4 AP, probably?

Three vibrators?! Please tell me this hypothetical rigger is a lesbian. Otherwise, I don't think I want to know.


In fact, I am quite sure I don't want to know.

What? A guy can't pleasure his joygirls? Sexist pig!