Drain Monitor
by Dave

One of the many things in Shadowrun that could use some improving is their system for handling drain. Certainly, it makes some sense that when a magician casts a spell and doesn’t quite resist the drain he suffers fatigue, tiredness, even a little bleeding. However, this results in some strange situations because of game balance. For example, a street samurai gets shot, and takes a serious wound. This represents a bullet ripping through his thigh, perhaps, lots of blood loss, muscular damage, etc... This can easily healed by a spell. The same street samurai runs too hard for too long and suffers some stun damage, which can’t be healed by a spell. Magic can heal massive blood loss, muscular damage, etc... but can’t give a little pep-me-up to that samurai because to allow stun to be healed by magic would let magicians heal drain damage? This makes little to no sense.

Thus, the new condition monitor, known as the drain monitor, a separate condition monitor specifically for drain. Only characters that have chance of suffering drain will have this separate monitor. This monitor will have the same severities (light, medium, severe, deadly) and penalties (+1, +2, +3, +4) as the stun and physical damage monitor. These penalties are not penalties to everything, but instead penalties only to magic related tests, such as spell casting, conjuring, astral tests, etc... Another option is to apply these penalties as normal; that is, they affect all TN’s. This does subject magician type characters to three different possible modifiers, that of stun, physical, and drain. Game balance and the specific campaign should dictate which option is used.

Drain on spells will be rolled/resisted as normal. However, any drain not resisted will not be applied as stun damage, but instead goes to the drain monitor. Filling the monitor to deadly does not result in unconsciousness. Instead, when the drain monitor is full, any further drain will applied as physical damage.

As a note, this does not negate the rule of casting a spell over the casters magic rating; this will still go towards physical. In the rare case when a mage casts a spell over his magic rating, and already has a full drain monitor, any drain not resisted will be applied twice (that is a light is two boxes, a medium 6, a severe 12, and a deadly, 20) This WILL overflow into the overflow, and can kill the caster.

The drain condition monitor does not heal with rest or drugs; the only way to remove drain boxes is time (and some magical herbs and such…) Every hour after suffering drain, the mage removes one box of drain. The only exception to this is if a mage is sustaining a spell for an appreciably long period of time. That is, a healing spell sustained until permanency does not slow down the recovery of drain, but a physical mask spell sustained for 15 minutes does interfere with the recovery of drain. Sleep and/or rest does not improve the recovery of drain.

Some of the strange results of the magic/stun drain system of SR are solved with this system, listed below.

1. Magic not being able to heal stun damage. Stun is described as tiredness, bruises, etc… If magic can heal gaping wounds, it can make a person feel better (healthy glow), it can do numerous things, but it can’t heal stun damage? Ridiculous, and part of SR merely as a game balance mechanic. Thus, the new spell Revitalize

Revitalize
Type: P Target: 10- essence Duration: P Drain: -1(WL)
This spell gives a target a ‘pep-me-up’; that is, it removes fatigue, numbs bruises, and generally increases the energy level of the target. In game terms, it removes a number of boxes of stun per success, up to a maximum of the force of the spell. A given stun ‘wound’ can not be healed more than once by magic.

2. Mages and cyber/bioware that affects stun. The trauma dampener, pain editor, damage compensator, etc… all seem to be a bit too powerful when applied to a mage. Now, the effects of these are not changed in any way, they just don’t have any effect on the drain condition monitor.

3. Resting in odd places to regain stun. It always seemed that magician characters (who were usually the only ones to suffer stun damage) were trying to rest in odd places, and at odd times, for specific amounts of time, in order to heal stun caused by drain. With this system, they don’t have to do any such thing. Drain returns at one box an hour, no matter what, whether resting or not.

4. Offensive use of Stim Patches. Stim patches caused possible magic loss as a game balance mechanic, to prevent mages from healing stun damage caused by drain by using stim patches. So, some people got the bright idea to use the chemicals in a stim patch as an offensive weapon, causing mages to fear magic loss from Narcoject weapons filled with stim patch chemicals, which seems rather ridiculous since the whole point of stim patches causing magic loss was as a game balance tool. Stim patches no longer cause magic loss checks in this system.

Magical Herbs/Compounds

Various magical herbs are able to remove drain. These compounds can NOT be synthesized artificially, but instead must be grown naturally. Additionally, the various biotech corporations have tried to mass produce/grow these compounds, but have had little success. There seems to be some inhibitor to such activities, with the result that these compounds must be grown individually or in small batches, or they do not acquire the right properties to reduce drain.

Orichalcum Moss: A moss that grows only on veins and rocks of orichalcum, this compound will temporarily remove all boxes of drain for 2d6 minutes. After the time is up, the mage then suffers all the drain he had before, plus one extra box.

Mana Smoke: Burning a strange combination of tobacco and other compounds produces Mana Smoke. Inhaling this smoke will convert drain to stun at the rate of 2 boxes of drain converted to 3 boxes of stun, per minute smoked. This stun, however, is able to be magically healed via the Revitalize spell.

Purple Nightshade: This compound, a derivative of deadly nightshade, harnesses the physical energies to remove drain from the consumer. When taken, purple nightshade causes 1 box of physical damage, which can not be healed via magic, but must be naturally healed. It then removes 1d6-1 boxes of drain (zero to five)

Dragons Blood: Literally the blood of a dragon (and thus incredibly rare and expensive), this will remove all boxes of drain, with no penalties. Of course, dragons are generally not willing to give up their blood. Also explains why dragons are such powerful casters: they heal all drain instantly.

Drug.......................Cost(per dose)....Availibility........SI.....Legality
Orichalcum Moss............500...............6/48 hrs..........2........Legal

Mana Smoke..................250...............4/24 hrs..........1........4P-X

Purple Nightshade..........1000.............8/72 hrs...........3.........6-X

Dragons Blood..............50000............Ha Ha...............5........10-X



Revitalize
Type: M Target: 10-Essence Duration: P Drain: -1(Wound Level)

Revitalize heals stun damage. Each success on the spell test removes one box of stun, up to the force of the spell. The spell must be sustained for 5/10/15/20 turns for L/M/S/D stun damage. This can be reduced by using successes to reduce sustaining time.