First the question on magic. Is it just me or is drain really really light for spellcasters? We ran into an NPC mage that was throwing force 6 manabolts with out any drain. I was a player, so I don't have his stats available, but we looked up the drain code and I believe it was (F/2) or three boxes. 3 boxes seems awefully light for the kind of bad stuff that a f6 manabolt does. Our mage was confident he could toss those around without breaking a sweat if he didn't specialize in summoning (and had magic @ 6).

Next up, I read the hacking stuff pretty quickly, but I didn't see much difference in hacking on the fly and otherwise. It seems like your still looking for firewall (+3 or +6 depending on privilege level you need) and rolling hacking + exploit. Seem like the host still gets a shot to detect you (system + analyze?) no matter which method you use. I assume I missed something here?

later

An important thing to note about hacking on the fly as compared to probing is that while hacking on the fly the system gets to roll every time you do, and gets to accumulate hits until it beats the rating of the hackers stealth program.

While probing takes longer, and the threshold is higher, the system only gets one roll to detect the hacker, unless there's a glitch.

On your Drain Question-
What I noticed with that is that the Drain really seems to accumulate. It's not too obvious, but overcast a little and mess up a few of those Drain rolls and you're suddenly injured. Then all an enemy has to do is put a little more stun on you and you're dust.
If you want to think about it another way, think about how many times the average character needs to resist damage in a given Combat situation, and then how many times the Mage does. The Mage rarely leaves combat without at least a little Stun, and that's if he's on the offensive.

On your Hacking Question-
The big difference is that when you're Hacking on the Fly, the opposing node gets an opposed test for every one of your tests to Hack in. Probing the Target only affords the opposing node one test, regardless of how many rolls it takes to get in.

Also something to remember is that unlike previous Editions, the majority of Mages will only have a Magic of 3, so for most Mages that Force 6 Manaball will be causing Physical Drain.

However, I'd imagine that more then likely the NPC Mage was built like many PCs are, with both Drain Stats at 5+, Focused Concentration, possibly some Bio Enhancements and one of the first Metamagics being Centering, in which case yeah, he should have been able to toss around powerful Magicks without much hassle. Just be aware that your team surely faced one of the more powerful meta-human wizards in the sprawl and lived to tell the tale.

As for Force 6 Manabolts being nasty, yeah, but so is a narrow burst fired from an assualt rifle loaded with ex-ex rounds, and unlike the Manabolt, a sammy only takes damage from his weapon if he rolls a crit glitch. (Plus the assualt rifle doesn't leave the user's personal calling card everytime its used.)

Probing can be performed by every shadowrunner and sprite that has Exploit 1 and a commlink. It may not be advisable, mind you, but probing an entrance is the time consuming crap part and getting the TM with threaded/assisted Stealth, Analyze, etc up to 12 to waltz in makes for very efficient digital breakins.

every time they cast a spell, they get punched in the head.

However, it's predictable and manageable. Pretty easy to know your limits. It just so happens the guy in your example has pretty high limits.

Yes, this is a very, very small price to pay for killing anyone you can see with your mind.

People complain about how expensive it is to be a mage at chargen, but in fact it's only expensive to be a really good mage at chargen. Being an "average" one is actually pretty affordable.

saying "the majority of mages will only have Magic 3" is just rhetoric unless you make it a reality in your game. If magician PCs concentrate heavily in their magical abilities (as they should), what you get is either A. the magical opposition the team usually faces will be underpowered, because most of it has ratings of 3, or B. magical opposition scales to give the PCs a challenge, and the "average 3" no longer becomes true. Magic is just too rare for there to be a good pedestrian value to go by.

2bit you realize that the exact same thing holds true for the mundane opposition the team faces as well right?

Why shouldn't all of the sec-guards hired to protect 'Lab X' only be made up of the best of the best who could thread a bullethole with their firearms? After all, I'm fairly sure that the team's sammy has concentrated heavily on his combat skills. And I'm also fairly sure that the team's Decker has concentrated just as heavily on his Matrix abilities.

The answer is of course that they might be if 'Lab X' is worth the time and trouble that it would take to staff it with such super-soldiers, but it doesn't change the fact that your average Joe Human will have a '3' in his stats and a '3' in whatever skill(s) his job requires, and the same will also hold true for Jake Mage down the street, the PCs, Awakened or Mundane *ARE* the exceptions, not the rule.

The biggest complaint I used to hear from a player is that Magic is overpowered, because with everything else you get the chance to Dodge and Resist. Where with most magic you can only resist, as well as that Armor does not normally apply.

This was untill he ran a couple of adventures and had his main villain KOed in the first round by a Rigger and his drones. The Street Sami mopped up his minions. The Mage and Rat shaman, having been delayed by swarms of rabid Rats arrived just in time to say, "Good Job Guys!"

I still hate the matrix. It makes sense, but still seems rules complex, and although meshes with the Skill + Stat system, substituting program for Stat, just feels different from the rest of the rules. Was wondering what people thought of limiting rerolls to Logic*2 and/or Limiting program usage to Logic attribute, thereby eliminating the Logic 1 Hacker.

Umm, got off subject. What was the question again? Oh ya.

The trouble with magic drain is that it seems to compound itself.
Also mages tend to have little in the way of speed augmentation.
The health spell must be maintained, and either reduces effectiveness or requires a Sustaining Foci, Enhanced Reflexes Cyberware has to much essence drain for its effect, and Synaptic booster combines a little essence drain with great expense.

Well JonathanC, I started my second paragraph with "However, I'd imagine that more then likely the NPC Mage was built like many PCs are ..." , and in my second post I made it a point to mention that whether mundane or Awakened the PCs are exceptions to the rule, so while yes, in the Sixth World the majority of mages will have a Magic (3) coupled with Spellcasting (3), the PC Mages tend to be more powerful, just as the rest of the PCs will tend to be faster/smarter/sexier then the rest of the world as well in their choosen specialities...

Yes Aaron, that was exactly what I meant to say, only more conceise and to the point.

I re-read the wireless world chapter again last night and I noticed the difference between fast hacking and slow hacking in a careful reading. Cool. My hacker is about to come into a bunch of money soon, so I'm looking forward to getting some agents and drones.

As for the magician, we did quickly realize that he was pretty advanced. I'm pretty sure the team's summoner could have taken him if he didn't have a barrier in place which prevented the spirit horde from getting at him. Made sense too, the mage had kidnapped someone and was holding them for ransom.

If its any consolation, manabolt was just as horrible in 2nd ed...

One of the lovely bits about SR is that PC or NPC, green runner or vet, a shot to the face is still something to worry about. One of the charms of the system.

And I would agree that the average corp or sec mage would likely have a 3 maybe 4 in magic, there are references all over the place to corps being "hungry for any magic they can get" and mages who are "upset that the corp believes their powers only go so far and as a result there is a cap on advancement in the company for them." What needs to be remembered is that for the average person a 3 in magic is something to worry about still.

Run of the mill magicians in the Sixth World will indeed have 3-4 Magic (possibly 5-6 if they've initiated a couple of times which isn't uncommon if they've been active a while). However, a natural Skill or Magic Att. 6 individual is quite powerful.

As I think its relevant to the issue of the game balance of sorcery, I just thought I'd revisit the often overlooked fact that visibility and cover modifiers apply to spellcasting too - this impacts magic use directly by reducing relevant dice pools.

I've been running SR4 for 2 years now and I've yet to encounter a situation where a magician got to use his full sorcery dice pool in combat. In fact in most shadowrunning situations magicians (regardless of which side they're on) are looking at a -2 modifier minimum in combat - unless they're idiots and are standing out in the open with "geek the mage" painted on their body armor. Obviously there's ways around this, but I've seen modifiers eat away all of a magician's dice pool more than once.

Here's another question: A lot has been made of how wards can be set up around something that moves, like a van, since it isn't moving in relation to the object that was warded, or something like that. If that is the case, and someone wards a van, how many bullet holes do I have to put in that van to break the ward? What if I pop the windows? failing that, what if I sawed open part of the walls of the van/car with a monofilament sword?

An important note that I haven't seen brought up on this thread is that casting a spell is a complex action. Firing a gun is a simple. So for every one Force 6 mana bolt you throw down, you could have fired a heavy pistol twice.

So while the manabolt does more damage (6p and no soak), the pistol gets fired twice. So if you hit with the manabolt (assuming one net hit), your target takes 7+ boxes of damage. If you fired a pistol at him, he'd soak 6+ physical (at -1 AP) two times. If your target has a limited soak value or you're getting a lot of net hits on the attack roll, the pistol does more damage over the initiative pass - and of course it also costs not drain.

And that's a pistol. If you're shooting bursts of AP rounds out of an assault rifle it isn't even close. The automatic rifle does more damage than the manabolt and it fires twice.

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That being said, once players get a bunch of runs under their belt and start throwing around initiates with huge dice pools and the centering to reliably dump Force 9 manabolts on their enemies... then yes, the mages drop an opponent pretty much every time they go (unless there's a big Plant Spirit on the other team). Of course, by that point you've also got the street samurai with enough strength to haul around a "sniper rifle" as a close combat weapon and the AP rounds to make it hilarious and they'll often as not drop two enemies in an IP.

Shadowrun is really deadly. The fact that magicians can seriously injure people and suffer little or no drain doing it doesn't even register on the things that experienced shadowrunners are afraid of.

-Frank