Hi all, Played a session last night as a play testing type game. Got to a part where a combat mage (Player) cast a powerball at some ghouls just about to try and kill the party... However to my amazement the combat mage, killed them all in 1 hit.

So the details..

Force 5 PowerBall.

The mage rolled 5 sucesses. (or force 5) so 5 is the threshold for the nasty ones to get..

They have 7 body, and roll an average of 3 successes.. The damage of the powerball is ??

a) 5 base ++ 2 sucesses doing 7 damage ?

They just take the damage, no other resistances ?

OMG, I was shocked at that.

Anyhow, any comments would be great. (or if iam doing anything wrong, let me know.)

Cheers,

Guki

Yup, a little hinky isn't it?

Don't forget that Visibility modifiers do count during your spellcasting check (pg 173, the step 3: Choose a target section).

Besides that make sure someone is counterspelling for them. You can include several buddies in your spell-defense lending so long as they are LOS.

How did 7 damage kill them all in 1 hit?

Hold on. They had 7 Body, so their physical damage track would be 12. 7 damage would certainly hurt... a lot... but it wouldn't drop them.

Also keep in mind that your mage had close to completely optimal conditions - he had no visibility modifiers, no one was blocking him with counterspelling, he got a really good number of successes (if he had only rolled one or two successes, his spell would have done nothing at all), and all of his enemies were conveniently grouped together, with no other team members in the middle to potentially be caught in friendly fire.

So don't get the impression that your spellcaster is overpowered. He was just very lucky this time.

Yup, thats right they should have had 12 damage track...

7 is a large track on 12 so... anyhow it was the point i was trying to get across..


btw. yes I realize that he was incredible luck with the rolls and that the ghouls had just finished feeding from some dead chummers....

I thank everyone for they replies

guki

It is rather odd that direct combat spells only allow one resistance test. Nearly all other effects that do damage have two resistance tests. Guns allow Reaction(+dodge) and then Body (+armor). Melee allows Reaction+skill(+dodge) and then Body(+armor) Indirect combat spells like Flamethrower allow Reaction(+dodge) and then Body(+armor). Maybe there should be a second resistance test here too?

Or am I missing something again?

Actually I've sent a couple messages to Rob about this exact same thing, I asked if maybe they had left out the "Now target rolls willpower/body to stage down the damage" Cause in all my time of playing shadowrun I've never seen a spell drop damage that can't be staged down. I mean, we can stage down a rocket why not mana bolt?

IIRC combat direct combat spells as they are now have never had a "soak" roll just a resist roll. If you resist then you take no damage, fail and take the damage plus any extra for successes from the caster. I find mages to be less deadly in SR4 as a force 6 spelldoes six damage+success rather than being TN6 to resist and doing what ever base the caster wants, mmm deadly, insta gib to anyone who fails to resist.

I would like it if spells gave a soak roll, but hey, as it stands mages are good, but only on par to an air burst grenade.

heh... I remember in our SR3 game we had a mage who just loved hurling about deadly stun balls. It got quite silly. Bear in mind that this was a dwarf with a 7 Will and 7 Sorcery.

A way to annoy AoE attack spell users might be to bring the size of the area into play. IIRC a Powerball has a radius of x meters where x is its force. So a force 5 powerball is going to hit a 5 meter wide area.

It's not that big of a deal in some situations but in others there may be a good chance of killing half the team when you unload your last ditch force 10 whuppa Powerball.

Yeah, that can be a problem. I recall one desperate situation where we had been jumped by 4 tricked out street sams (that's my pacifist, strictly support mage; our trigger happy, just don't let me get into a fist fight mage; and our strictly pistols street sam).

My mage was on the ground with a semi auto shotgun stuck behind her ear, the other mage was being bitchslapped by another sam while our sam valiantly held her own against the other two sams.

Frustrated after being kicked in the nuts twice Mr "Stunball" Dwarf unleashes the most dice he can for a deadly stunball centred on us! While my spell pool let me resist it our sam fell straight over. Of course the sams' had a little counterspelling friend of their own so only two went down.

Luckily for me the shotgun wielding sam that was "taking me alive" was sufficiently disorientated for me to summon up all my previously bound elementals, which quickly subdued our opponents. Still a case in point of why centring AoE spells on the party is a bad idea.

If you want to hear another story of why shadowrunning mages are bad people to hang around with ask me about Slainey McRoth!

just top make sure I'm doing this the way every one else is, if the mage had only gotten 2 successes (crappy roll) and the target got three, the spell wouldn't work at all right?

Compared to the amount of damage you can pretty easily generate with a submachinegun or a hand grenade (both of which are incredibly more points efficient at character creation than becoming a mage), I don't really have a problem with the way direct combat spells work. If you're having a big problem with the mana based ones or stuff like stunball, have your enemies use more drones (which get an Object Resistance threshold and ignore stun damage).

I've seen a lot more carnage from stick-n-shock ammo then from stunballs. Stick-n-shock even has the benefit that it can hurt a drone.

Just wait til your mage figures out the oomph available in mind control.

One thing to remember with manaball and stunball, you choose your targets. It only affects those who you want it to with in the radius unlike a fireball where it affects every one.

Eyeless Blond: I brought up the very same question a few months ago, every one seemed content with how they worked. I think though you should still be able to stage down power, mana and stun spells.

Wrong. Nowhere in the description of combat spells, area spells, manaball, or stunball does it say you get to pick and choose. It specifically states the opposite.

Now, the bit about visible targets does leave open the possibility of using AR goggles, with some sort of AR effect to block your view of friendly targets while you cast the spell

That could work, depending on your group's idea of the limiting cheese factor in tactics. Just hope you don't have to see your friends reactively for some reason, such as following hand signals or knowing whether they fell because they were shot in the throat or because they were hit in the chest with a gel round.

There's a comment on the SR homepage FAQ on this sort of trick. I think it's written for SR3 rather than SR4 but essentially it says you can but you take penalties. The logic being that by trying to limit the spell in that way you're likely to fizzle the spell altogether and take drain anyway.