Quoting the spell, with some emphasis:

The attribute is now 3.

No, you can't hold back dice to help with drain.

Only one focus per dice pool, so you could use two seperate foci: one for casting and one for soaking drain.

I originally thought that the attribute would be 3 too, but then someone pointed it out to me that it could also make sense if it was talking about a cybered attribute. IE: Say you cast Increase Agility on a sammie with 5(7) agility. The spell must equal or exceed the augmented attribute, so let's say it equals the augmented attribute (cast at force 7).

Now if it is to be believed that the attribute in my first example becomes 3, then that means that the force 7 spell on the attribute 7 guy cannot increase the attribute whatsoever, even though it's a valid force to be cast on the subject.

Alternately it could all be done in the same order that the spell is written in. The spell is cast, the force check versus attribute is made, then the increase is performed. That would mean that the attribute in the original example ends-up at 4.

It's really not clear, IMHO. Is there an official line on this?

The problem I was seeing with the two foci problem is that dice are withheld. Doesn't that imply that they need to be applicable to the original test? I suppose not.

no, it's talking about the augmented attribute that comes from the spell.

Augmented attribute is defined on pg. 62. It includes increases from magic.

Essentially they wrote it badly. This is true whichever way they intended it. If they intended the force of the spell to be the achieveable attribute cap then they should have said so explicitly with/after where they talk about increasing the attribute. If they wished to perform a test then augment it then they should similarly have declared it explicitly. Right now, like it or not, it's open to interpretation either way which is why I'd like an official line on this. Any idea where I'd get one?

Having the force/rating be the maximum improvement possible, rather than the maximum attribute achieveable, would make it the same as all of the other attribute boosters. IE: It'd work the same way as Muscle Toner or Improved Physical Attribute.

It's not even all that cheap to achieve a high attribute in this way without penalties, costing 10k per force of focus, 1BP per force of focus, and 3BP per spell. The best available at chargen (due to availability limits) is +3 to one attribute which must be 3 or lower. That costs 30k and 6BP to bond and buy the spell (60k if it's all factored into resources).

Compare this to implants, which can give a +2 to an attribute, which may be high already allowing you to reach respectable levels of attribute, for 14-20k and a small amount of essence loss (0.4).

Yes, the mage may not have to deal with essence loss, but they do have a limit on the number of foci they can bond or have active at-once.

It comes down to interpretation. I think it's fairly obvious that they wanted the force to cap the attribute, you think differently. That's cool.

Comparing it to technology doesn't really work, as magic != technology and what similarities they have to one another aren't indicators of other similarities elsewhere.

I certainly read it as the force caps the level the attribute can be raised to. Attirbutes are much more important in SR4 than they were in SR3, so being able to raise the party sam's reaction to 9 or so from character creation is massively overpowering.

Saying that the improve attribute spell is limited by the expense of buying and binding a focus is silly... But then some people seem averse to playing mages in a support role. Best place for them in my opinion.

@Ornot:
Any mage worth half a grain of salt will have no trouble increasing the sam's reaction to 9 because the drain code is so low. If that's overpowering then doesn't that make the spell overpowering anyway? Also, most sammies I've seen have reactions of 9 anyway. Isn't Attribute 5+Reaction Enhancers 2+Wired 2 a common combo in many games?

Sustaining a spell has adverse effects even if you're working in a support role, unless to you support means just sitting there doing nothing. -2 dice on virtually all dice pools hurts.

@James McMurray:
Magic != Technology, I know, that's why I compared it to the adept power too.

Spells != Adept powers either. Making a comparison is drawing a flase dichotomy.

Perhaps they wanted attributes to be easy to enhance, but wanted it to be a monstrous beacon in astral space. Requiring a force 12 spell to get an attribute to 12 means making a big beacon. Giving that spell a drain DV of 4 means making it really easy to cast.

It also increases the costs of sustaining foci greatly, and makes it impossible to do much with starting resources that doesn't involve sustaining the spell. After char gen you can either save up the money and karma to bond a sustaining focus or initiate, increase skills, bond other foci, etc.

As written it's a powerful spell but not a no-brainer because using it effectively means a sacrifice of some sort.

@Lilt
The point is that increasing the sams reaction (or indeed any attribute) to 9 is tough because it requires a force 9 spell. Doable at character creation, but it runs the risk of physically hurting the mage. Hence not overpowering. If you decide it only requires a force 4 spell then it is overpowered. The fact that I chose Reaction over any other attribute is neither here nor there, although it would have been better to suggest agility or body (and yes, I know there is 'ware that boosts those stats as well).

The penalties on sustained spells can be quite bad, but bear in mind that the support mage can cast buff spells on the entire group, and still offer a number of dice for counterspelling. It's a different style of play than the combat mage, but they tread on the toes of the samurai and adepts much less and can afford to be very versatile since they're not spending all their BPs on spell foci.

The way that I read the Increase Attribute spell is that the force must equal or exceed the current (i.e. pre-spell) augmented attribute. It seems to me that the alternative is so odd that they would have felt the need to explcitly explain it.

However, surely some balance is provided by the difficulty of applying healing spells to characters with low essence? Mr. Ultra-Augmented is going to be hard to affect with a -[Essence Loss] dice pool modifier.

You could interpret it as only affecting the Heal spell as the fluff says "healing magic" but the placement of the penalty under the Health Spells general rules makes this appear less sensible to me. If it was only meant to apply to the Heal spell then it makes no sense to place it under general Health spells. None of the spell descriptions in the Healing category make any seperate reference to it. The rule text also refers to the spell casting test in abstract.

So if Starting Mage with Magic 6 and Spellcasting 6, casts Increase Reaction on a Sammie friend with Reaction 6, he'll need to cast it at Force 6 minimum. He'll roll 12 - 2 dice for Sammie's essence loss = 10 dice and likely get three successes, boosting Reaction to 9. That's great but in return the mage has to keep up a -2 dice penalty himself. Alternately, he can have spent 12 karma to bond a Force 6 sustaining focus and forked out 60,000 to buy it. (AND 24R availability with 1 week interval for when that matters).

If Sammie was Essence 2, then he's lost another hit on average. Or if Sammie was already Reaction 7, then that spell focus is going to be even more costly. Or the sustained penalty is going to be just as bad for a lesser difference.

I'm sorry - I just don't see it as that unbalancing. It may become so later on when the mage is quickening everything he can on himself, but there are other risks with that (especially at Force 9 for that Logic boost ).

@Lilt - I hadn't been reading it the way you are till just now, but it doesn't make sense to me that that is how the spell should work.

So a 1 Magic mage could could give a 2 Logic person +7 for a total of 9 (If he uses an edge and gets really lucky), but wouldn't be able to increase a character with a Logic 3 at all. That just seems strange.

edit: added the part about using edge.

No, hits are limited to the force of the spell, so your example (using one interpretation) would be +2 for a total logic of 4.

[edit] Perhaps a more striking example would be that a magic 3 mage could then (theoretically) raise someone from Str 6 to Str 12, but could do nothing for a Str 7 individual. [/edit]
[edit2] This makes me favor the "force greater than augmented attribute (after casting)" camp, but the parentheses really shouldn't be around augmented if that is the case. [/edit2]

@James McMurray: Not feel like comparing it to an adept power? How about comparing it to the Increase Reflexes spell. Increase Reflexes increases an attribute (initiative) with the increase based on the spell level, not the achieveable attribute.

Your way of reading puts Increase Attribute as an oddity, no other attribute increases work like that. Say that it's obvious to you if you like, but the wording is wide-open to interpretation so to say that one interpretation is obviously right strikes me as being a bit blind to other possibilities. Do you have any solid reason why it should work vastly differently from every other attribute augmentation out there, even other spells?

I don't know exactly what you hope to achieve with wild speculation about astral beacons. I'll wait until I hear it from one of the game developers before I consider that a serious argument. In a manner similar to you I might argue that the spells were given such low drain codes to make them easy to dispell, but I'm not going to. Why? That claim, like yours, holds absolutely no weight.

Using a sustaining focus to sustain the spell using my reading is potentailly worthwhile. Attributes beyond 6 are impossible at character creation, and boosts via the spell and a sustaining focus cost a lot more than any other boost, even without requiring the ridiculous-force sustaining foci of your proposed system. By your system, the foci are so hard to get hold of that it's easier to find a T-Bird on the black market (Availability 24) than a focus able to sustain a spell that can boost an attribute above the human maximum (Force 7, Availability 28).

@ornot: A force 9 Increase reaction spell only has a risk of causing physical damage to a character with terrible drain resistance. 2P drain needs 2 successes, which can be bough with 8 dice. I've never seen a starting character with fewer than 8 dice to resist drain. Even the 350BP mage in a system with increased magic costs had 9 dice to resist drain.

Thus attributes to 9 are doable at character creation, and there is absolutely no riskof hurting the average mage. Is it thus overpowered?

@Llewelyn & Da9iel: I don't consider that to be too serious a problem. You're talking about a rule which allows edge to circumvent the normal order of things. I'd personally say that the oddity was with the edge rule, which screws-up a lot of other spells too, rather than assuming that they designed the Increase [Attribute] spells with that rule in-mind.

I can also explain why they may have included that rule, what it was designed to stop, using an example of one of my old SR3 characters. Primal was an elf with charisma 10. He used a force 2 casting of increase charisma in a force 2 sustaining focus to increase his charisma to 12. This meant that that summoning force 6 spirits only ever did him light drain. Using a trauma damper, the light stun drain became nothing.

Now obviously I can't say for certain that is why that rule is there. Under my interpretation, however, I'd rather it was there (with a few strange situations possible) than it wasn't (with abuse possible).

Lilt: reading it as I do makes perfect sense to me. I can understand your interpretation and see where it comes from, but that isn't the interpretation I get. It may be an oddity but that isn't an indicator that it's wrong, nor is it an indicator that I'm right. Again, we have different interpretations, which is cool. If yours works for you, use it. Mine works for me so I'll use it.

My bit about astral beacons was given as a "perhaps this was what they're thinking" exercise. I don't know what they were thinking and don't claim to. It was definitely speculation. If it came across as something else that was not the intent.

I don't think we're having a tally... If someone wants to they can start a poll thread, I guess.

Anyhow, I'm all for being tough on mages (and tough on the causes of mages) but I really do think that minimum force based on the character's attribute at the time of casting is balanced. With either reading, extremely high attributes are a possibility. Having the force cap the boost, rather than the attribute achieveable, merely makes putting the spell into a focus vaguely feasable (yet still more expencive than other techniques).

Okay, so they don't lose essence, but the fact that active foci are limited by logic, and foci bound are limited by Magic, means that mages aren't completely without limit on this.