Someone mentioned designing an Increase Reflexes +5 that would have a drain of +5D. Thoughts on whether this spell is to over powered to allow in a game?

I wouldn't allow it, personally. And the Drain doesn't balance it at all - especially since they can turn around and take the "caster only" limitation.

Increase Reflexes +1, +1S
Increase Reflexes +2, +1D
Increase Reflexes +3, +3D

Following this trend...
Increase Reflexes +4, +5D
Increase Reflexes +5, +7D

So, yes, it does seem broken. Then again, this is a spell that many think even the concept of is broken. At any level.

To get it down to +5D would require the self only limit. So the question is, how many 6's can you roll to resist drain? Although this is one of the few times where force 1 through force 4 does not affect your drain difficulty.

It's not as bad as the F(Level+11) or so poly-elemental spell, but still is potentially crippling from one casting.

Were you referring to my post in this thread?

I don’t think increase reflexes over *3 would ever be reasonable.

Its not just a matter of drain it’s a matter of how fast you can go before your totally unbalanced. With increased reflexes +5 and a decent reaction the best cyber zombies cant keep up with you. And spells are easy to get, even if I cant find a copy it will only take me a couple of weeks to design it for myself. And then take the tattoo magic metamagic and a trauma dampener, tattoo it to anybody I want at force 6 spending 12 karma and making it force 24 for the purpose of dispelling and interacting with wards. Itll take you 2-3 days to recover from the drain but your doing this during down time.


Now if I can have +5 what is to say I cant have +15 the drain code is only +27D, I have a trauma dampener.

Ok, 2+16D6 initiative, +3 to all TNs. As long as you're not playing SR2 this still doesn't let you kill more in the first pass than you normally could, it just lets you belt out half a dozen low effect spells at the end (when you are out of pool, and may have a physical wound increasing your TNs even more).

If paired with sacrificing and a pet masochistic shifter, then it's a problem but that's more the resul of the sacrificing/regenerating combo than any one spell.

Herald of Verjigorm. The idea was that you would quicken (or tattoo) the spell and take a couple of days to recover so your TNs are not being affected. And you can fire a gun quite effectively with only skill, especially when you can shoot them 10 times so they run out of combat pool to dodge.


Vaevictis. My bad, the fastest CZs still out speed a mage with inc ref 5,

Ok, quickened spell. That's either, force 2, illegal, or somehow guarded by treaty and permit.

Force 2 results in a maximum effective force of 8. Not bad, but neither is it unbreakable. If I am just forgetting the part on reinforcing quickened spells, then the vulnerability factor isn't real, but if I am right and that none exists, this spell will slowly degrade over time.
Also, high init is not as critical in SR3 as it was in SR2. In SR2, you roll a 42, you go twice before the 27 roller. In SR3, you roll a 57, and unless you have MBW3 or 4, you get one standard pass before the 3 roller gets a chance to shoot you.
Even with all that, there is an adept power to beat out any initiative roll.

Getting 7 more actions than the next player may unbalance the share of the combat at the table, but only breaks the combat if enemies are standing in a row in clear daylight and no one has a FA weapon.