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Thanos007
Let me see if I have this right. If some one hits you with a spell then you get a chance to resist it then you get another chance to lower the damage if it did?

If you are trying to learn a spell all you can roll is your sorcery skill, provided you don't have a teacher ect. Is that right?

Thanos

If your wondering how slow I realy am. I can only read the book at work. Strange, huh?
Lilt
1) No, you either roll body or willpower (depending on the spell) once and, comparing this to the caster's successes, you either take no damage (by achieving >= number of successes, noting the = there) or you take damage and the mage stages it up one damage level for every 2 net successes he scores.

2) One elemental per attempt can aid study in the field they specialise in (fire = combat ETC) which uses a service. Apart from that; teachers are the only other thing that give bonuses to learning spells.

3) Do you work in a gaming store or something?
Kanada Ten
Also, for damaging Elementals, the defender can attempt to Dodge -just like Ranged Combat- prior to Damage Staging.
RedmondLarry
1) Maybe sorta. Spell Defense (SR3 p. 183) comes between the caster's success test and the target's damage resistance test. If the target is a magician, or another magician on the same plane as the spell and within range has selected the target as a "protected subject", and has allocated Sorcery dice (and perhaps Spell Pool dice too) to Spell Defense, they get a chance to use some or all of their allocated Spell Defense dice to reduce the caster's successes.

For simplicity, many GMs ignore the allocation of Sorcery Dice to Spell Defense and play that Spell Defense is just any portion of the not-yet-spent Spell Pool dice. This house rule greatly simplifies the handling of Sorcery Dice.

After all magicians who have the opportunity to roll Spell Defense have had their chance, and if there are still remaining successes by the caster, then the target(s) get to roll to stage down damage.

2) When learning a spell (SR3 p. 180), the magician rolls Sorcery Dice, plus a hermetic can add dice from an optional elemental of the right type (as Lilt says), plus a Shaman may add Totem Modifier Dice. If there are any successes on this roll, the magician may also roll Magic Background as a Complimentary Skill roll. Every two successes on the Complimentary Skill roll (SR3 p. 97) count as an additional success on the Sorcery roll, and can reduce the time it takes to learn the spell.

In addition, your GM might allow you to use Karma Pool to reroll failures when learning a spell. See "Extended Actions" SR3 p. 246-247. (We don't allow this in our team's campaign, but many GMs do.) If your GM does allow this, the rule indicates that you specify how many Karma Pool dice you are allocating to this at the beginning of the extended period, and these Karma Pool dice would be unavailable for any other use if, for example, someone interrupted your spell learning with a submachine gun.
Thanos007
QUOTE
Do you work in a gaming store or something?


Comics and games actually. I get in arroung 9am and leave around 7pm. By the time I get home I have time to make dinner for my son and me and go over his home work/spend time with him. So I do most of my Shadowrun work at work between customers and paper work. Which doesn't allow much sustained concentration.
Cain
QUOTE
Let me see if I have this right. If some one hits you with a spell then you get a chance to resist it then you get another chance to lower the damage if it did?

That depends. There are two types of damaging spells in Shadowrun. The first is the Combat Spells, which have a base TN of the Body or willpower of the target. For these spells, the caster makes a test, the defender makes a test; if the defender wins he takes nothing, if the caster wins, the victim takes the full base damage plus one level for every 2 extra successes. So, in this case, the target does not get a second chance to resist the damage.

The second are the Elemental Manipulation spells, such as Fireball, Lightning Bolt, and so on. These work more like standard ranged attacks. The base TN is generally a 4, and the damage code is treated in a fashion similar to if you had hit him with a gun doing the same damage. You roll your test, the other guy rolls his dodge; assuming he did not dodge fully he then makes a resistance test. Whoever has the most successes after this gets to stage the damage. So, in this case, he does get a soak test.
QUOTE
If you are trying to learn a spell all you can roll is your sorcery skill, provided you don't have a teacher ect. Is that right?

Assuming no Elemental Aid Sorcery bonuses, no Totem Bonuses, no School bonuses, or metaplanar quest bonuses... yeah.
Catsnightmare
I don't have my books with me at the moment, but I thought you could decrease the target number to learn a spell by -1 for every two points the rating of the Sorcery Library used to study is higher than the force of the spell being learned.

Anyone with MitS handy please correct me on this if I am wrong.
Snow_Fox
For part 2) A shaman also adds dice from her totem, for example raccoon gets+2 dice for manipulation. Wolf shamans get +2 dice for combat spells.
A mage can use the dice of a summoned elemental to help(since there is no elemental for healing their sol for that.)
spotlite
QUOTE (Catsnightmare)
I don't have my books with me at the moment, but I thought you could decrease the target number to learn a spell by -1 for every two points the rating of the Sorcery Library used to study is higher than the force of the spell being learned.

Anyone with MitS handy please correct me on this if I am wrong.

That's for designing spells only I'm afraid (which is already pretty damn easy, what with taking magic rating off and all that malarky).

Actually one of my group enquired about designing a metamagic technique which would allow a reduction in target number when learning a spell. I'm going to allow it (with -1 TN per 2 grades of the mage) but he's got to design it first. I'm setting the target number somewhere silly, and the base time as if he was designing something like an ally spirit or a smart frame or something. When he's finished, he can have the ability.

I don't see why not really. We did some math and it wouldn't unbalance things that much, especially not when you compare it to meta-questing to reduce karma costs.

Anyone got any thoughts on that idea? Ideas on how to balance it or reasons why it Must Not Be Allowed (other than canon reasons please. The point is its something new!)
RedmondLarry
After much discussion in our group, and here on dumpshock (awful that was), our group decided to lower the TN for learning a spell by the magicians initiate grade.

This house rule lets an initiate 6 learn a force 9 spell with the same TN as a beginning magician learning a force 6 spell.

Our GMs do not allow Karma Pool use for Extended Actions such as learning spells (optional rule, SR3 p. 246). If we used this optional rule for Karma Pool, we would not have changed the TN for learning a spell.

We agree that astral quests to lower Karma Costs for spells is too much, unless you rule that Disruption during an Astral Quest results in rolling for magic loss, like Disruption in Astral Combat does (SR3 p. 176). Every astral quest results in success or Disruption ("Astral Quest", MitS p. 92).
spotlite
I don't think they're too much. Mages eat karma and really do need it for three or four times as many things as normal characters. Considering how powered down mages are in SR3 compared to Sr2 (not saying its a bad thing), I don't think its too much. They bothered to include it in a rule book, I've got to think its balanced. Sometimes we change rules which don't suit, but we try to find which part of the game it has inevitably unbalanced and alter that to match (like you have, consciously or otherwise - I think if you don't allow the karma reduction or downtime karma pool use, then a target number reduction is a great idea).
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