Ok, I hear a lot how damaging magic is. I also hear how magic users are harder to make, I hear a variety of things, here is somethig subtle I saw:

Ok, this is the way I read(past tense) it, as well as every group I have played with plays it, mostly because of the previous editions.

Mage wants to geek Sam with a mana bolt.

Mage rolls his magic of 5, plus his spell casting of 5, for 10 dice. Say its a measly power of 5.

mage rolls 3 net hits, for 8 points of damage.

Most say its unfair as the sam now rolls his willpower, with no armour, and can at best reduce damage by 4 boxes.

The mage then rolls his willpower plus his logic. Making the mage come out on top.


Ok: Turn to page 195. This is all wrong. Sams do have a chance, and sams with counter spell dice have a very good chance against a mage.

mage rolls his dice, Sam rolls his will power plus his counter spell dice if he has any. If the Sam ties or wins, the spell does no damage at all.

The caster needs at least one net success to do any damage at all!

I had totally missed this, having played since 1990, and the caster only having to get one net success, and targets getting only a damage soak roll.

this new way, the target gets to counter the spell (a psychic dodge?), then he gets a soak roll.

How many of you made this simple mistake?

This really makes a huge difference.

Not quite. They do compare successes, and the target does take no damage if the mage doesn't get at least one net hit.

But the target only gets that one resistance roll - he doesn't roll to resist, then get another roll to soak. The target still only gets one roll!

The only thing that you were doing wrong was using a simple soak test, instead of an opposed dice test.

Also note that the force of a spell limits your hits on your test. It doesn't limit net hits, but instead limits total hits.

Let me summarize...

Mage casts a Manabolt 4 at a Street Samuri with a Willpower of 3. The mage has a Magic attribute of 4 and a Spell Casting Skill of 5 so he rolls 9 dice. The Street Samuri rolls his Willpower of 3 plus any counterspelling dice provided to him.

First the Mage is limited to 4 successes on his 9 dice because he is casting a force 4 spell.

If the Mage rolls more total successes then the Street Samuri then the Street Samuri takes 4 + Net Hits in damage.

If the Mage rolls the same number or less successes then the Street Samuri then no damage is done.

gives elemental spells a reason to exist, this...

Can we continue that example a little more.

mana bolt 4 willpower 4 spellcasting 5 vs willpower 3 + spell defense( if any).

spells are limited to its force in hits.....

So the mage rolls 9 dice and gets 5 hits and the sam rolls and get 2 hits. What does this mean? Even though the mage rolled 5 hits he can only use 4 of them which means he only gets 2 net hits which means the samurai eats 6P????

OR does it mean you can only stage the damage up = to the force of the spell? Meaning a force 4 spell could only inflict a maximum of 8p ever??

From what i understand its the first one that limits your hits allowed.

I'm not sure I get why people complain about this topic again and again. In SR3, a mage -still- had the advantage = Casting Skill + Spell Pool dice > Will/Bod dice, and a Street Sam -still- couldn't use armor.

Without actually saying whether I think it's balanced or not, I'll point out that "it was imbalanced before" is not a valid argument for "it should be imbalanced now." If it were we'd still be playing SR1

allso, if there is something that get a rpg'er talking, its the flaws of the game they "love"...

It was there. It hasn't happened as much in recent history because there had already been several years of it. There were also new books to discuss, and things introduced in new books to provide some balancers.

Once SR4 has been around a long time it'll drop off for is as well. If nothing else discussion of magic will all but die for a while when the tech books hit the stands.

That's what geekkake said.

Here's a question for you....

Can you dodge an area effect elemental spell? By just reading the rules it seems the answer is yes. But the part of my brain that relies on logic screams no. So I'll ask you:

A) Yes , by all means dodge that 4 meter radius Fireball.
B) Yes, but scoring more successes only lowers the damage.
C) Hell no! It's blast radius is 4 meters and the power remains the same no matter where in the blast radius you are. How do you even remotely dodge that?

A 4m radius fireball spell doesn't necessarily mean a 4m ball of solid fire. More likely it's a burst of fire starting at the center and blasting outward with streamers of flame, in which case the dodging involves ducking down and turning your back so you just get a little singed instead of a lungful of pain.

A victim of an elemental attack does have a chance to dodge the it. The mage has to beat the target in an opposed ranged combat test to hit the victim.

The target gets to stage down damage at that point by getting (at least a bit, if not entirely) out of the way.

i think previous editions had elemental area effect behaving about similar to a grenade. so if you can dodge a grenade (head for cover basicly) you should be able to dodge a fireball.

the one thing that irks me about the SR4 elemental area effects is that they now seems to require you to see the target, just like a normal area effect. before you could basicly aim one just inside a door and hope to catch anyone hiding out of view on either side...

so thats one thing ill probably allow in any games i end up a GM of...

I was thinking about Elemental combat spells the other day for a similar reason. Why bother with them when they have little to no benefit compared to a powerbolt or powerball spell? They have harsher drain (IIRC) are resisted by armour, which direct spells are not and do about the same damage.

I have to say I'd probably allow someone to target an area with an area effect indirect combat spell. I'm just not sure how I'd work the mechanics as of now.

The general consensus is that the elemental effects do allow for hitting things you can't see, using the standard ranged combat rules.

Maybe elemental spells get a dodge test because there is no scatter to muck them up?

Grenades are fairly screwed for a long period of play because your skill reduces the scatter but the damage is not necessarily staged up.

That, Booklord, was precisely the problem I was having. I'm coming around to the idea that an elemental effect comes into being near the mage who then throws it with the force of his magic at his target. Looks flashy, neh?

I think you just have to look at it abstractly, allowing a target to avoid it if he/she passes the ranged attack roll of the mage. So my question really boils down to this... What is the appropriate dice pool modifier to hit someone out of sight? This is assuming the GM has decided the victim is within the putative area of effect at all, as if the victim is too far across the room or too far down the hall a grenade would be useless as well.

Theres a dodge dice pool penalty for dodging area attack weapons. As well there should be.
Page 151 on the table, at the bottom. Its a -2 for an area attack weapon. This can obviously apply to area affect spells too. Which makes them far more scary.. o.O

Generally, though if theres no logical reason they could dodge it, then either apply another, larger penalty or disallow the dodge... sometimes this can be one and the same if the pool is reduced to zero. Area affect spells are magical as well, so they aren't quite the same thing as a grenade or a missile, nor as precise, so I'd suggest being liberal in how you rule those as compared to explosives.

Thought the area attack weapons was for things like flamethrowers