Ok, my team mates and I are fighting a hoard of venomous awakened spiders and they are all over the place. I need to cast an area effect spell to take all of them out quick. I use my free action to provide counter-spelling to my teammates for my own spell. My gm says I can't do that. Ok, I use my plant spirit to provide it instead with good results. Later my gm and I are talking and he says there isn't anything in the book that specifically prohibits it but he just doesn't like the idea. He asked me to post this here to see what you guys think.

So what do you think?

gunsnammo

Your GM is right, there is nothing that prohibits it in the rules, and I also don't like it. I am curious about this, so I cede the floor to the more imaginative minds of Dumpshock...

It does sound a bit beardy... but I would probably allow it except for adding a penalty to your casting dice cause you are trying not kill your friends too. If you were casting it just at the enemies, yeah let her rip, but with your friends in the way, you have to concentrate alot harder... unless you dont really care about them, but you bothered to CS them.
Confused yet?

I'd personally say allow since spell defense is a free action. Just make sure you know where all the dice are being allocated. If the GMs feeling iffy, I'd say a -2 modifier for disctraction ("gee I hope I don't kill my friends") woulnd't be out of order on the spellcasting test.

I agree with your GM on both counts. If it became a problem in the game I would probably tell the mage to take half the counterspelling dice as a penalty to the spellcasting roll.

Because I don't have my book at hand, does counterspelling work the same way in SR4 as it did in SR3? (ie. effectively reducing the total number of successes from the casting.)

Example:
Mage cast Stunball force 6 and receives 5 successes.
Same mage is counterspelling to protect his buddies and reduces the number of successes from the spellcasting by 4. (4 successes on Counterspelling)

Now everyone effected by the spell rolls to resist and only needs 1 success to fully resist the spell.

Yes/No? Discuss.

The reason I bring it up, is because if the mage is counterspelling his own spells to protect his team, then the Enemies will be protected as well by the same counterspelling. Thus the mage is probably better off not casting the spell in the first place.

and then there's stun damage overflow

Deek--That's why I'm asking if it is like previous incarnations of spell defense.

Does the counterspelling work on the resistance, or does it remove successes from the casting?

There seems to be a break down in understandings...if it works on the resistance side of things, only the individual protected gets the benefit, whereas, if the counterspelling removes successes from the casting the benefit is to everyone who has to resist the spell.

I would rule that you can't counterspell your own spells, but for a different reason. It's the only way to make the abominable and otherwise worthless Reflecting metamagic in SM have some small point.

Counterspelling dice are rolled with the attribute to resist the spell. If it is protecting several people, it is rolled once and the result added to the attribute rolls of the protected people.

I would allow it. Counterspelling works against all spells, not just the first one.

Evil thought, what happens when a glitch on the counterspelling dice affects everyone protected (that is, a lot of ones, enough to make it a glitch regardless of what is rolled by the others). That could be a nasty result.

Besides, not everyone will like to be targetted by damaging spells, even if they are boosted a little bit.

I don't think counterspelling yourself is viable really. You could cast at less force, or not cast at all. But the real problem is with casting a LOS/A spell in the middle of your allies.

Back in 2nd Ed I remember there was a distinction between direct and indirect spells that a caster had to see the target's aura/s of a direct spell (and they could only resist) while an indirect spell moved through the physical and so LOS to the area was all that was needed. AFAIK there is nothing of this in SR4, but I see no reason why it couldn't still apply.

Example:
A magician wants to manaball some chipheads that just stole his luggage. They're hiding out in an apartment building and he can see the two thieves hiding in a stairwell. What the mage doesn't know is that there is a third chipper in the stairwell that is leaning back against the wall and effectively out of sight.

The mage casts a manaball down between the stairs to put the hurtin on the happy handed fools. Only the two visible targets to the mage make saves to resist, while the third runs off with the loot in a hurry.

Now if the mage cast an indirect spell, aka fireball down the same stairwell, it would burn all three if he scored a successful hit on each, whether he could see the third or not.

In the original poster's example, he could throw a manaball at his feat and choose to only affect the spiders he could see, but not throw a fireball without a prompt beating by his "team mates".

yeah, i wouldn't give the mage penalties to counterspell while casting on a target 100 meters away for distraction, the only possible argument for distraction is if he is indeed worried about hurting his allies a lot (this would depend, IMO. if his allies all have willpower 6, and he's got a force 6 counterspelling focus, and his counterspelling skill is 7, and he's got a spirit providing teamwork bonuses, and there's another mage in the group with decent counterspelling, and then you compare that to a spellcasting pool of, say, 12 dice (not bad, but certainly not all that awe-inspiring either), i would say he's probably not worried about dropping a stunball =P

if, on the other hand, he's got counterspell 3, no focus, and no other help, but is a totally optimised killer mage with a dice pool of 20 dice and his teammates all have willpower of 2... and one of them is his significant other, or they've been running together a long time... that would change things quite a bit

Jaid:

To me the distraction isn't so much as 'worrying about his friends' but 'actively jamming mana around somebody' (counterspelling).

I am perfectly fine with:

If a person deliberating delays an action until the mage 'casts' (and the person can realize they are casting), they could 'distract' the mage. (probably only something minor like -1 or -2) OR the mage could 'ignore' what they are doing (with possible health problems).

Note: this would require the 'interrupting' person to have gone first, and purposely waited 'until the mage does something', otherwise the mage is done before the person could act.

I would see the mage counterspelling his own spell exactly the same....

He is having to focus one:

Using mana to cause an effect on everyone in the area AND use mana to 'jam' the effect on those he is providing counterspelling on. Both occurring at 'exactly' the same time (unlike him casting on bob and bob casting on him, they may be very close together but one IS before the other).

Peace

How do you know when a mage is casting?
It's not like DnD where there are components (unless you have geas).

Personaly, the mages in my world, whether runners or wagemages, all fire weapons, just don't aim them. Take a little longer to figure out who they are. And it is normally the team mage that pinpoint the other mage (astral perception).

I've only played SR4 once as a mage (and that mage was a overpowered one off guest star as I had a night free and the GM let me sit in). However, I have played SR2 and SR3.

Physical manipluation spells - such as Fireball, Lightningball etc effected a set area, regardless. Where as Stunball, Manaball etc only effected what you could see, if you wanted to effect them. Thus, you could Stunball an area and only effect enemies. This was vary useful. However, as it required LOS, it meant that you got shot more (out of 3 IC years running, I spent over a year and a half in hospital).

In SR3, this rule was changed. and so we use to cover up one eye to block out friendly PCs and avoid hurting them. I didn't like this method as, to be honest, it looks stupid.

Personally, I think you should be able to use Counterspelling against your own side. This means that they are more likely to survive it, but there is still a risk involved.

I like the fluff explanation that your spell signature is "in sync" with the astral jamming of your counterspelling and as a result goes right through it without slowing down. Make it painful to hit your own side. It's not like mages are gimped and need these kinds of "let's just fuck up everything in sight and pick up the pieces later" rulings to make them effective.

(And it makes Reflection not completely pointless, damnit! Ok, I'm done. For the next ten minutes.)

I don't have my books with me right now, but

I had the impression that indirect spells (specially those with elemental effects), you only needed to have LOS on the point where you want the spell to go off, not every living thing in the area. Indirect spells affect gear, so do not need to be have an "living aura" to work.

Without going too deep in the weeds on this, the SR4 consensus is that there isn't one. It might be that it zooms from your hands to the explosion point and then explodes. (So transparent barriers are a problem.) It might be pick a point and it explodes from that point. (No barrier problem.) It might not explode at all. Maybe it zooms from your hands and only hits people you can see. Perhaps it manifests straight from astral space around the target and only hits people you can see.

If anyone can remind me of consistent SR4 rules/descriptions that clearly forclose one of these options, I'm listening. My recollection, however, is that this is another thing that is left open but probably was meant to follow SR3 rules.

If you can't counterspell your own spells then you might as well rule tha tyou can't full dodge your own grenades, too.

Well, no. You can make a perfectly good fluff explanation for why you can't counterspell. "Wavelengths" or signature of the magic, whatever.

You can make an uncomfortable and messy fluff explination that has far reaching consequences, especially when you takes into account things like background counts and aspecting.

If you don't like it then rule that it can't be done but don't try to fluff explination. Just take a cue from Absorbtion. Characters can't absorb their own spells. Why? Because it would be too powerful. There is no need for fluff.

And such a rulling isn't required to make reflecting usefull. The most useful aspect of reflecting (perhaps the only useful aspect) is that successful reflecting fully protects everyone that the magician is counterspelling for. In most cases a magician will have more resistance dice than a mundane protected by counterspelling will have.

Seems counter intuitive to counterspell yourself, I can't seem to get around that.

Considering all the options of combat spells (each version as touch, 1 target, and then area), and the ability to limit area by removing dice from the spellcasting pool, I think it just takes a little more strategy.

Players have guns and gernades, guns for picking off targets, gernades for when you want to make a mess and aren't so choosy. I'm not gonna give sams selective "nanite" gernades. Mages have the same options and some of the same limitations.

This is really about attacking in crowds more than about whether can you counterspell yourself. And since even a fireball in SR4 won't hit anyone you can't see, I really don't see a huge reason you couldn't make it not affect your allies. (house rule of course).

After all you need to see the target to attune the magic to his aura, and if you don't than nothing happens as far as the magic is concerned. So you just choose to tune your friends out.

Except that they clearly give you the ability to limit the area of spells for just this reason. And it shows the advantage of melee in some situations and enforces spell strategy in mages. I'll probably leave things as they are and not allow counterspelling their own spells. The players are just going to have to think things through and coordinate better.