Can somebody tell me why stun spells, though they are much more usefull than spells doing physical damage, have less drain?

My guess would be that maybe the more dangerous (lethal) stuff takes more mana energy to power it up...or maybe the core belief of most religions/philosophies that killing is bad as is wanton destruction, and therefore the wielder pays a heavier price...just my two

Only the designers can tell for sure assuming they are willing to discuss it

Perhaps they assume every player is a bloodthirsty bastard and want to introduce an incentive for non lethal tactics.

Probably because players already have enough of an incentive to go on killing sprees as it is?

why are they more useful?

You take 8 boxes of stun, a rating 8 stim patch fixes it, well, mostly.

I believe the reason that has been given for stun damage being more effective in SR4 is that while cyberware and racial modifiers that increase Body are plentiful, those that increase Willpower are relatively rare. As a result, with Body determining the length of the physical damage track, and Willpower determining the length of the stun damge track, it tends to be easier to incapacitate someone with stun damage.

Afterall, you can't apply that stim patch if you're unconscious. And once you're unconscious, finishing you off is a trivial matter.

Stun spells generally don't affect objects and from a mechanical standpoint, it takes about twice as much stun damage to kill someone. Ergo they involve less energy.

I always figured that stun spells didn't cost as much drain to fling because they didn't have to have a real physical effect on your target. Stun spells simply fatigued muscles not burned them, flayed them, etc. I think it makes perfect sense really. Why make something that just causes someone to sleep (fluff definition of a stun spell calls it a sleep spell) as hard to cast as a fireball that not only sets hair, clothes and weapons on fire but also can cook off ammunition? Not as much "gathering mana" with the stun spells.

Unconscious guys recover quickly. They wake up and become witnesses, or they're still there the next time you tangle with the group.

Also, remember that NPCs react very differently to stun damage than physical. Imagine yourself, being threatened with a knife or a fist, a gun or a taser. Compare limping from a kick to the thigh to limping from a bleeding bullet wound. Lethal force is scary. You're looking at risk of death, serious injury, long hospitalization, compared to something you can just sleep off.

The sec squad thinks that "geek the mage" sounds like a great plan when he's throwing sleep spells. When one of their comrades is lying there brainfried and gulping blood from a mana bolt, they tend to focus on the "stay out of LOS" from their training instead.

Why stun damage ist better than physical:

- smaller damage tracks
- dead or unconscious, does not matter, they are out of the game anyway
- you can kill an unconscious easily
- you can question an unconscious afterwards
- you do not commit murder

In a war physical damage might be better, but in a run-scenario stun damage is much much superior to physical damage.

I think stun damage should get +1 drain instead of -1 drain. Afetr all I want a gritty SR world, not sleepland "its much easier to stun somebody so we do not even have to kill" SR.

@Fangirl: I didn't say physical was always better, I merely stated reasons for why it sometimes was preferred. Murder is a very serious thing and often to be avoided, I agree there. But if you have guards fighting to the death because their employer will kill them if they fail, and react the same way to runners using non-lethal force because they think the runners will just go around and kill them once they've knocked them unconscious, imo your NPCs aren't reacting like cannon fodder, not like human beings.

People care very much about staying alive. Lethal force is scary.

There is no ingame logic: In real life it is also much easier to kill somebody than to stun him ti unconsciousness.
To kill somebody you just blow mana into him, to stun him jou have to tune the amna to not kill him but still ahve an effect.

it is a myth that with magic it is somehow more logical to assume that stun damage is easier to apply.

Lets face it: Stun damage does -1 drain, because since SR1 the game designers think (falsely) that killing somebody is somehow better than "just" stunning somebody.

I would agree that it should be harder to apply Stun damage than Physical damage with a spell. The former should only require raw power - if you use too much no one cares becasue dead is dead. With the latter, I would imagine that you have to be far more precise if you don't want to accidentally inflict Physical damage. No, I'm not talking about overflow, I'm stating that it's much more difficult to build a taser than to simply electrocute someone.

Because stun spells are so much more useful, thousands of shadowrunner mages have steadily refined and improved their casting to the point where they have less drain than spells that do physical damage. . . .

Is that quote in the skills section? It sounds like it is. If so then the grounds for applying it to heal checks are more than shaky. That said though, we let people heal stun damage faster by applying additional hits as a divider for the base time. So if you succeed with 2 or more net hits your time is halved or better.

Nope, it is from the game concepts section

Stun spells are great and wonderful things....


Until you run into that guy with a Pain Editor. Whoops, guess that stun spell wasn't so effective after all.


As a GM, if my PCs became overreliant on Stun spells, Pain Editors would become more common, as would armor with integral biomonitors linked to stim patches.

That armor should be a staple for high tech high level sec gaurds whether your group uses stun spells a lot or not because that armor has a good chance of converting damage to stun. It should also have some combat drugs, trauma patches, and other builtin medical goodies.

Personally, I think the drain values of the spells should be even. While the Stun track is smaller; chances are not many people in your party are working on shading in boxes on the same track you are. Secondly, being a mana spell, it cannot affect non-living material things, so manaballing a button to turn off a timer that blows the world up, simply will not work. On the other hand, it is one of the few combat spells you can use on the Astral Plane, which makes it incredibly useful.

I opt for stun doing more drain than physical also for the following reason: I want a gritty world. Its a personal design desicion, which I think, the SR4 world shares.

I did that. Its just that I want to know the reason why they made it work the way it works (other then just blindly copying from SR3)

Belated: What is wrong with making the stun track expanded by body, instead of willpower? Being used for various other things and spell resisting is plenty fine for willpower, really.

The simple fix would be to have the Stun track based upon the higher of the character's Body or Willpower.

This would certainly make Trolls last longer in non-lethal fist-fights...

They weren't just "blindly copying" from SR3 - stunning spells have caused less drain than physically damaging spells across all four editions (I checked). Grit and utility have nothing to do with it - it's one of the actual logical consistancies in the system: less effort/lower energy output = lower drain. Area effects cause more drain than touch-range spells for much the same reason. Channeling lower levels of raw mana into a living target you've got your hands on to knock them out is simply less taxing on the caster's system than channeling enough mana that it not only crosses the astral-physical barrier and flies through the air, but can blow up a parking lot full of cars.

And this is carried across the entire range of combat spells. The stun family costs the least, b/c it uses the least amount of energy. The mana family costs more because you're using enough energy to cause permanent physical damage. The power family channels about the same amount of damaging energy, but requires more effort because you're making it manifest in the mundane world. They follow a similar formula in the Indirect class, as well. The clout family jumps the mana/physical barrier, but it's effect is still relatively low-energy, as it only generates enough force to stun. And finally you get to spells like Acid Stream the that go even further and actually convert that manifested mana into another form of matter or energy entirely.

I'm not quite certain how you define what makes a "gritty" gameworld, though. However, it seems to me that if even your most cybered-up street monster is vulnerable to some mook-level wizkid dropping his ass with a stunbolt and stealing his shinies or selling him to organleggers, you've got plenty of grit to go around. Besides, you can't tie a dead guy to a chair and torture him for information or simply your own amusement.

As for the shorter stun track - I'm of two minds about it. On the one hand, it probably should be a bit more robust to prevent those situations where your troll can take a shotgun blast to the gut without blinking, but goes lights-out if you peg him in the noggin with a baseball. Though, on the other, being built like a tank doesn't necessarily make your neurological system any tougher. I suppose one way to change it would be to keep the same damage tracks, but refine the types of stun damage as direct or indirect. So have your chars resist indirect stun damage (like punches, clubs, etc) with bod, but apply to the mental track, and only use willpower to resist direct neurological damage like electricity and mana.

Well, see the discussion earlier in this thread why it is harder to do stun damage than physical damage. Even from a magic point of view. this has nothing to do with "ammounts of energy".

Short version: To kill somebody just throw magical energy at him. to stun him you have to controll that energy, to only affect his brain in a way that it is stunned and not damaged. Much more complicated.

But this is only fluff. With magic you can justify almost every rule with some fluff, so fluff is no reason for anything at all. Balancing counts.

If that was true, why do deadly spells do physical damage right away? They would have to do stun first and just be of such power, that they are always overflowing you to physical damage.

But no, stun and physical damage spells are not just spells of different power.

But as I said: This is only fluff anyway, which, especially in case of magic, can be changed very easily.

The two driving questions for the issue are:
1. which damage is more "usefull" and should thus do more drain (balancing)
2. what do I WANT to be more common (design desicion) because of whatever reasons

concerning 1. I heavily tend to stun
concerning 2. I want a gritty world where the default damage spell is deadly

That is pretty much it. I just wanted to hear other opinions about point 1 and 2.

As I said. Its very easy to find a suitable fluff explanation for most rule effects of magic . . .

I think it also helps to have characters who let roleplaying dictate their actions abit as well. I ran a Mage who used stun prodominantly but wouldnt blink before dropping a deadly area effect if you pissed her off (even at the detriment of the run) she once saw a teammate drop at her feet from a near fatal gunshot and she freaked and started frying guards left and right despite the express order to use non-lethal force ( i thought it was excellent roleplaying so I didnt hose the group paywise... at least not that bad).

I will agree that stun being cheaper does lead to some mages being mainly a disgusting over powered taser with legs. but I havent had anyone take advantage of it too much, just throw in a couple drones and watch the stun mage cry.