That character (which I think is pretty min-maxed) still has approximately a 1 in 20 chance of simply dieing from drain when summoning a F9 spirit. Yes, on average, they'll be fine. But averages don't apply to individual rolls.

And that's not factoring in the spirit using Edge, which is suggested here by many, and in the book.

Thanks for the Information. I must have missed the Shdows of Book you referenced.

Prague info is from Shadows of Europe for 3rd ed. It has a lot of good stuff on euro magic communities all around, while we're at it.

Awesome... I will poll my friends to see if they have the book.

Levitate and Improved Invisibility do not a magician make.


Umm... shooting things (cyberware/bioware). Evading detection (mundanes don't leave astral trails all the time, nor do nonexistent spells give off auras). Just not being a Magic 6 Adept saves you 70 BP in chargen that you can use to be more awesome at other things. Spells don't work in the Matrix.

There's plenty that mundanes can do better than mages.

Indeed... to both Sentiments above...

Furthermore, the amount of prep time a mundane needs is usually lower. A mage needs certain preparations prior to combat (Improved Reflexes and other buffs, summoning/binding spirits), whereas a mundane has access to most of his features without preparation. Caught with their pants down, a mundane usually fares better than most magicians.

YES. In one game I'm in I'm playing everyone's favorite Nosferatu Mystic Adept. He sustains Improved Charisma and Improved Willpower at all times to keep those attributes at augmented max. In combat, he'll also cast Increase Reflexes and Combat Sense. He has no sustaining foci, so I eat all those negative modifiers and like it. I also use about seven combat drugs to beef up my stats (and to help deal with those penalties).

We were ambushed and my character dropped in the first Combat Turn. The group just kinda looked at me for a second and my response was basically "I was ambushed - I didn't have prep time." Betameth, Psyche, Betel, Kamikaze, Nitro, Overdrive, Snuff, Oxygenated Flourocarbons, Combat Sense (with usually 5 successes), and Increase Reflexes at +3 Initiative, +3 IP make a big difference - but only when they're actually in your system/active.

BTW, per SR4A, object resistance table on page 183:

Simple Manufactured goods are Threshold 2
Manufactured High-Tech Objects (electronics, alloys, etc.) are Threshold 4
Highly Processed Items (drones, vehicles, computers) are 6+

Thus a camera, depending on how SOTA it is, could be Threshold 4 to 6+ for that mage to be using Improved Invis on.

AFAIK, this was a change that happened, and people are often confused by it (OR 3/5 vs. 4/6).

Your PDF is out of date. That was erratta'd to 2, 3, and 5 respectively.

Argh. Thanks. Just updated my (apparently old) copy from DriveThru, and yes, it looks like you're correct.

Any other things I should keep an eye out for?

This is why you don't min/max with drugs, kids.

Simply illustrating a point. With the prep-time, my nosferatu is nigh-unbeatable. Without, he's like a punching bag - he gets knocked down but gets right back up again.

It really doesn't illustrate the point, though. It just outlines that, should you build a character with specific massive weaknesses that require prep-time to overcome, he's at a disadvantage when ambushed.

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

Oh, do go on. Your sarcasm is scintillating...

"Illustrating the point" is exactly the same as "outlining" the same point, it's just worded differently.

Don't Illustrations have pretty pictures though? Outlines are kinda boring.

As fun as it is, I assumed he was using them as synonyms there. The different part is the *rest* of the sentence: instead of being an example of 'prep time is necessary for mages', he sees it as an example of 'character built to require prep time suck without prep time'. Come on, guys.

...Are you even allowed to do that? I swear I remember some very nasty consequences for mixing your controlled substances, especially when you're on enough performance enhancing drugs to juice up an entire Urban Brawl team.

You hallucinated that, unfortunately. The penalties for mixing drugs in SR4 are a slap on the wrist. They *should* be much harsher. Besides, what does a Nosferatu care about suffering Essence Loss? Bleh.

@Eratosthenes

I doubt that.
To die you need at least 11 boxes of physical damage. (10+1overflow)
This would mean the force 9 spirit needs at least 6 hits and you should not have more than 1 hit on your resistance roll. (Spending edge on this one still beeing an option)

For a Force 9 spirit to get more than 5 hits the propability is less than 5%.
More than 6 is less than 1%.

To get less than 2 hits with 13 dice is also less than 5%.
I do not want to make the exact calculations now, because it would be quite long. (mulitplying the propabilities of each outcome and check if the character dies in this situation...)

So lets just say in 4% of the outcomes from the roll of the spirit you have the possibility to die without medical attention but it is highly unlikely (less than 5%).
In only 0.73% you are likely to die without medical attention. (33% chance)
And in 0.1% you are likly to die even if you get medical attention.

(This is assuming you do not spend edge on your drain resistance roll!)

This changes the second the spirit starts to spend edge....

@Yerameyahu
Just the abuse of rule mechanics which are not written for this kind of character. It is like the extrem Karma gain of free spirits. Or putting all the stuff you get at chargen at a place no opposition can ever reach. (For example Tibet as a free spirit)

Honestly: If a GM allows that kind of sillyness, they allready opened the floodgates of hell. In this situation this character is not really scary. He is rather weak.
A free spirit gaining 1.000 Karma per month is a bit more over the top, soon.
You can stop both with GM-Fiat and GM-Fiat only. A bit more is needed for the free spirit thought.

I was only going with 10 boxes. You're right, I did not account for having to go into overflow. (I think I figured if you were unconscious, the spirit would finish you off, but in a scenario in which a spirit got enough successes to kill you, odds are low you'd succeed in the summoning anyhow; nevermind the possibility the character has 9 or 11 boxes to start with).

So there's a 14.48% chance of the spirit getting 5+ hits (~10% 5, ~3.5% 6, <1% 7+). After that I eyeballed it, as I didn't have the inclination to figure out the separate possibilities for if they rolled 5, 6, or 7 hits. On second look I realize was a high in my estimate (on drain resistance, 0 hits is .5%, 1 hit is 3.3%, 2 hits is 10%, 3 hits is 18%, so 3 or fewer hits would have a 32% chance of happening).

Regardless, there's not an insignificant chance that a mage of this caliber, summoning such a spirit, will walk away with serious wounds, if not a chance at unconsciousness/death.

Which can be countered by many, many possibilities.
From first aid to ware and I already mentioned edge...

On the other hand, every non-magic charracter out of chargen is just dead facing such a threat.
A force 9 spirit is fully able to wipe out a complete mundane 400BP runner team. (1 Sam, 1 Face, 1 Infiltrator, 1 Hacker)

Nah. All the team has to do is kill the already wounded mage.

You can argue that the mage doesn't have to be there, but I'd counter that why would the mage get the drop on the team, and not vice versa? A sam could drop the mage from afar with any longarm. The hacker could wreck his car. Etc. Etc.

The arguments go all wonky after that.

I'm not saying spirits aren't powerful, possibly too much so. I'm all in favor of the "Spirits use edge over a certain force" mechanic, which completely hoses any mage attempting to summon such a spirit. Heck, even F6+ becomes dangerous if the spirit uses Edge.

EDIT: Oh, and any mage built at chargen would most definitely be a one-trick pony, namely spirit summoning. Granted, it's a pretty flexible pony...

@Eratosthenes
The force 9 spirit can conceal the mage.
Lets keep it compleatly fair and drop the off at a building with nobody else around. The mage does only need to be concealed and wait while the spirit goes looking with 18 dice on perception and the speed of thought...


Well, not really. This mage would be quite a potent spellcaster too...


Well, yes that takes care of the problem. But you have to consider, that a Force 4 spirit is now "harder" to summon than a foce 9 spirit was...
Half the edge of the spirit and let them use it to resist summening and binding.

And the team waits around for the mage to summon/call up the spirit (complex or simple), the mage to command the spirit (simple), the spirit to materialize (complex), the spirit to conceal the mage (simple), then attack the party?

That's what I meant about the argument getting wonky: you argue something, I counter it, you come up with another scenario, ad infinitum.



As for Edge, you can always make it so that F6 spirits and up use Edge (or F5, or F7...whatever you're comfortable with as the GM). I think there's definitely room to play for where the power line should be made. Or your rule, where they use half their edge.

On a side question: does concealment work vs. ultrasound/radar sensors as well? I'm assuming it does, by its description.

If a spirit is using concealment, does it show up on the astral plane? That would be an easy way to counter it

It shows up as normal for a dual-natured critter, but Powers (IIRC) don't have auras like spells, no. Concealment can work on astral, but I forget if it has to be 'cast' there or not; presumably it works fine, because of the dual-natured spirit.

@Psikerlord
It does show up like a spell, yes. (Critter powers also do, as far as I know)

How they interact with wards on the other hand was never said...

@Eratosthenes

Only if you go silly about it. Like saying they start in the same room or something like that. If they start in the same room, the person who shoots first wins. (The same thing would be me saying, that they are a thousand miles from each other, making attacks from the astral plane the only possibility. And then start claiming a mage can bring down 300 Sams...)

You can't hand all the "bad" carts to the mage and then argue, that he ain't that strong, because he lost.
This works with EVERYTHING. Even Great dragons can be killed easy that way.
You can't give one side the drop on the other side or make one side totally immune to the other side. Or leave one side days to prepare.

So situations should be "reasonable". Like attacking one building or defending one building. Or fighting in one area.

The most common I've heard is that summoning/binding a spirit with force > your magic, it'll use edge. This would also be likely to make F6 spirits inaccessible from character generation, if you're using BP (since most people softmax)

I wholeheartedly agree. I think it's actually somewhat of a testament of something approaching balance (asymptotic to, perhaps? )that there are not reasonable situations that would be "fair" to both sides. Even attacking/defending a building is too complex to devise something that's "fair" to both sides (in both situations I'd argue the hacker is actually the most powerful).

Concealment is a Physical power. It can't be used on Astral forms or while the spirit is Astral. SR4A 293. What it can do is allow a Materialized spirit to protect physical targets from astral perception.

There's also the problem that Nosferatu can't get high unless they have very low Magic. Nosferatu have Immunity (Toxins). Arsenal 73 explains:



So with Magic 3, you are immune to most street drugs. Arguably, Kamikaze isn't a street drug, but most of those other ones are.

How did you roleplay that? Being on one of everything in the medicine cabinet, I mean. Especially since some of those drugs have slightly.. contradictory effects on personality and behavior.

Yeah, that's what I meant, Umaro. I worded it very badly, thanks.

I'm one of those who thinks magicians don't need to be gimped because there are enough checks and balances in the game already, as long as the GM uses them. I've stayed out of this conversation because I've said it all before.

The point UmaroVI makes above is a pain in the ass, because one of the checks I rely on is the Physical/Mana split between physical and astral realms respectively. Yet there it is about Concealment on page 293, which contradicts page 293 (same page, dammit!) "physical powers cannot be used in astral space or affect astral forms." (And yes, let's not talk about Materialization, which is a physical power used on astral beings to allow them to become material, and is illegal by RAW and makes all spirits unavailable in the physical realm if you follow RAW.)

Interestingly that last line for Concealment is not in the original SR4 book. So it got inserted in there with SR4A. A poor decision for game balance, imo.

My little list of magical tweaks to balance some magical oddities.

Especially physical combat spells like fireballs and lightning which have a horrendous drain even on low power.

Spell Design Table
The Interval time on the spell design table is changed to “Weeks” instead of “Months”

New Spell Design Range Effect
Nexus: Area effect around the caster, caster remains unharmed, cost as AOE

Weapon Foci
A weapon foci can only be built by a weapon that delivers its damage mainly from the user’s strength. Weapons using technological means to damage its target are far more complicated and more expensive due to the imbalance between technology and magic. Gloves, daggers, swords and knuckledusters are good examples of possible Foci. The larger the weapon or technologically complicated the more expensive it becomes.

Weapon Foci Cost
Weapon Foci: 2000,00 X Modifier (Minimum 1)
STR+AP+Reach= Modifier.
Fixed Damage= Modifier
1/ 2 AP= Fixed Damage

Example: Katana Str+2 / Ap-1 / Reach 1 Modifier: 4 X 2000 + Weapon Cost
Example: Shock Gloves 5S / AP (+5) / Reach 0 Modifier: 10 X 2000 + Weapon Cost

Mana Illusion Spells Resistance
Non-Living: Not Affected
Living: Willpower+Spell Resistance

Physical Illusion Spells
Non-Living: Sensor+Clearsight
Living: Intuition+Spell Resistance

Invisibility Spell
Since the standard invisibility spell is an illusion spell they work on the mind which means that unless the target manages to resist the spell they will not acknowledge the invisible persons presence by anything that is interpreted through visual means as they will not believe that they are there - no matter what a drones sensor tells them.

A view-screen from a drone/vehicle which is unaffected would alert the target that something is amiss on the other hand even though they cannot see it. Detection through other senses (smell, hearing ad touch) would have no limitations. Improved invisibility fools drones the same way.

This can also be reversed by using Trid Phantasm on a drone for example – The drone will pipe its fake information to anyone watching the sensor output.

Indirect Combat Spells
Follows the rules for shooting so a mage can:
-Blind Fire spells (Throw a fireball into a dark room)
-Use Radar Sensor and Echolocation to “see” his targets (after all, they ‘shoot’ magic)
-Shoot spells from fingers through small holes without seeing the target

And...
-Suffer the same ranged modifiers from the Ranged Attack Modifiers Table like everyone else.
-Suffer the same visibility modifiers from the Ranged Visual Modifiers Table like everyone else.

Use rules for Aerodynamic Grenade and use F as modifiers for range calculations in regards for range modifiers.

Bonus to resistance VS Spells
OR table gives resistance dice equal to the difficulty instead of a flat target number for casters.

Essence Loss Gives a dice bonus equal to essence lost due to cyberware and bioware to reflect on how harder it is to affect non-living objects.

Example: Manabolt VS Minidrone opposed test. Drone has body 1+6 for object resistance and rolls 7D6 to resist the casters pool. If the drone has protection through counterspelling it adds that too.

Vehicular Resistances
Vehicle armor has no effect against Mana Spells (just in case it does in some rule)

Dodge Against Combat Spells
Mana Spells: Intuition (Sixth Sense)
Physical Spells: Reaction (As per normal Ranged Combat rules)

Soak Against Combat Spells
Mana Spells: Willpower
Physical Spells: Body+Armour (As per normal Ranged Combat rules)

Detection spells – Catalog
Catalog spell is changed to “Passive” and does not need to break the OR of an item. The term “non-living items” in the spell description does not include vehicles or drones as they are not “items”.

Spell/Spirit Knack / 5BP (Edited)
The quality adds “Adept” as well giving the character one power point to spend on adept powers. Spells, spirits and adept powers are all limited by the magic rating of 1. It can be taken multiple times for each category. This means that the maximum force for spells/spirits is 2 as the magic rating of the character is 1.

Astral perception VS Stealth
[Stealth Pool VS Astral Perception Pool opposed test]

Astral observer gains +2D6 against Awakened Characters and a +1D6 to Living beings. Visual modifiers throw a reflection on the astral – Add Visual Modifier Rating -1 to Astral Perception Pool.

Overcasting
Overcasting gives a drain of F+Modifiers instead of F/2+Modifiers. This also applies to summoning spirits. Each point of force overcast gives the spirit an additional dice to resist being controlled.

Wait, an AP of -1 is a +1 modifier, but an AP +1 is also +1 modifier?

(Str)+2_DV -1_AP +1_Reach = 4
+5_DV +5_AP +0_Reach = 10

Que?

Yes, in the case of Shock Gloves you have a 1/2 impact armour as your defence so we take the damage code of the weapon as the actual cost modifier - otherwise we have nothing to base the cost of 1/2 impact armor on as other weapons usually have an actual number.

This is a way to justify a powerful weapon that halves armor.

How is that different from taking the Adept quality, which also gives you a magic of 1, except that you can later raise it? They both cost 5 BP.

Seems like just adding some (suboptimal) flexibility. Not a bad thing, per se.

I agree. It's good flavor.

Then again I don't think the knack lines lend themselves to min-maxing much anyhow, since if you want to use it, you've gotta be a non-modified mundane.

Oh! I was reading it poorly. Derp.

I was tempted to do this as a baseline option but instead made it a use of a bound spirit of the type appropriate to the spell being designed. One service per extended test check; force required equal to (threshhold /4 round up) - design dice pool modifiers (other than spirit help). For example, a combat spell (base 12/4 = 3) being created from scratch (-2 pool modifier becomes +2 force required modifier) but you already know a similar spell (+1 pool modifier becomes -1 force required modifier) results in a required force 3+2-1=4 spirit to reduce your time. Note that I allow the same spirit to both reduce the time interval and add extra dice if you have enough services banked.
It's a recent addition but I think it's promising.



Nice...I had thought of vaguely similar things but never bothered to formalize it. Mostly in the context of a blast effect combat spell with a rolling shockwave rather than an equally spread concussion (think Akira aka expanding force bubble). This provides a mechanism and the lack of ability to select a different centre for the nexus balances the "doesn't effect caster" limitation, for combat spells at least.



A reasonable argument can be made that this is RAW. I have made it elsewhere specifically in the context of delayed-loop cybereyes. It is slightly weaker for drone input but the same argument can be made.



Nice, this feels like damaging manipulations from earlier versions. Really, that's all indirect combat spells are: a way to make the direct damage manipulations fit under the combat spell umbrella.
I am very tempted to include this in my game...I'll have to chat with my players.



Interesting. I think this powers up magic against tech quite a lot though: extra dice is roughly 1/3 as effective as a higher threshold though since a higher threshold is essentially free hits on the resistance test.
The power balance is shifted too heavily for me to adopt it but the idea is interesting...I especially like the extra dice for low essence as a way to make sams less mage-bait without a friendly mage. You would have to jack up the existing problems essence loss causes to healing magic to maintain that flavour but otherwise it is workable.



Novel. I would only allow this for indirect combat spells since they create a real physical effect that can thus be detected and dodged however, while all other combat spells are mental target locks from the mage. In the special case of a mage who you saw was about to cast a spell you could dive for LOS cover but that's not a dodge but is instead manoeuvring like you would do if you spotted an opponent levelling an assault rifle at you. Dodging is fine-grain twisting & turning not large grain running and hiding. The ultimate dodge example is Neo, of course. Finding cover takes way longer (ie at least a simple action).



Nice quantification of a vaguely stated game mechanic. I handle visual modifiers slightly differently, though, extrapolated from the flavour. Astral space has a vague amount of ambient light from the biosphere that is added to by every larger aura. Since auras glow then the opposite to the normal physical intuition for hiding applies: you want an astrally bright area to hide in since you are also a source of light. Think sneaking around carrying a candle: almost impossible in a pitch-black room but way easier under floodlights.

A sterile room with no living beings (operating room, recently clean corp office without plants/fish/etc, industrial plant teaming with drones) would be dimly lit in astral space regardless of the physical lighting conditions.
A place with lots of living things and/or magical auras (city park, magical lodge, crowded room, arboretum, etc) would be well lit regardless of the physical lighting.
Much as with physical stealth, astral stealth depends upon your ability to blend in: if you are the only aura (source of astral light) in an astrally dim area then you stand out; if you are just another aura in a sea of them then you don't stand out and your stealth checks are easier.

Note that the biosphere only provides a minimum astral light level if you are in the biosphere. If your characters are projecting/perceiving in orbit (presuming they live through it) then every aura is a sputtering candle in a pitch-dark room.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, background counts would raise the baseline ambient lighting. Those auras that mesh with the background count would blend into it, those that don't mesh would stand out normally, any that directly conflict (Ghandi at Aushwitz, etc) would stand out strongly. Think rolling fields of grain: person wearing grain camo is hard to spot; person wearing street cloths is OK to spot; but person wearing arctic camo stands out like a sore thumb.

I would suggest dropping the physical lighting condition modifiers in favour of the mods I imply above. I would also suggest adding an additional level for "perceiving/projecting astral figure" of +3d6 or even +4d6 since that level of active astral interaction would presumably make them even easier to notice.

I am inspired by your quantification to solidify a rough guide I had been using: active foci/spells add half force round up to the opponent's perception check.
Hmmm, a variation on that could be used for the awakened modifier: awakened auras add half their magic attribute to their opponent's perception check. This establishes a general principle to use as a guideline, makes the powerful stand out in astral space as the flavour text consistently says they do (unless they are actively concealing their auras), and still keeps the math simple to avoid bogging down a game.
If you want to let mages still blend into a crowd when not astrally perceiving/projecting the 'aura strength by magic attribute' would only apply when perceiving/projecting and otherwise they would only be slight more obvious: minimum aura strength of +2 as you already described, only gets stronger when perceiving/projecting.

Quantified, in an astral 'dimly lit' area this would be:
non-magical aura: +1d6
awakened aura (not astrally active): +2d6
active aura (astrally perceiving/projecting): +(force|magic / 2)d6, minimum +2d6

Astral void: double aura modifiers

Background count:
Favourable to aura: -(background count)d6
Irrelevant to aura: essentially irrelevant except raises ambient 'lighting' so sterile areas are easier to sneak through
Directly conflicts with aura: +(background count)d6

In all listed cases, normal stealth modifiers apply based upon the inverse of effective 'lighting' conditions. Well-lit astral areas would receive similar modifiers as badly lit physical areas.

With my GM hat on, I would suggest that nothing screams "magical intrusion!" to your common garden security mook more than "the drone sensor can see it, but I can't".

Of course, but my point is that if the subject is affected by invisibility the viewer with the sensor will simply not aknowledge the information he is given, the spell fools him into believing the sensor shows nothing because he is affected by the spell.

Someone else, watching the sensor output from a safe position (guardroom, piped information etcetra) would see what the guard does not see.

Another way to use invisibility to create a "blind spot" is to change it into a multi-sense invisibility, dedening ALL senses to the persons precense instead of simply 'bending light' through illusion.

This was mainly as a flavor effect that would fit close combat magician like Thor Shamanic magicians with Geas.

Wading into battle and then smashing his hammer foci into the ground and a lightning storm or shockwave applies from him, throwing everyone to the ground.

I've always considered that delayed-loop thing to be a cheap cop-out.



How many drones have a display panel showing it's camera input built into the side of the drone?

None that I know of.

Secondly, with MY GM hat on, the way I'd rule it is the guard going "what's the stupid drone shooting at? I can't see anything. Thing must be acting up again." It'd only be when he gets confirmation from the site's rigger (who logs into the drone and goes, "idiot, someone with magical invisibility just walked by your post") that he'd get another resist roll.

Remember, your average drone only has 3 to 6 dice for perception. It's going to critically glitch fairly often (what's a critical glitch on perception? Seeing something that isn't there).

Only have to worry about that if you get a Burnout Addiction. Because of the nosferatu's stats the only addiction he has is Mild (Betel) since there's no Test for it.