OK. The Force of the spell limits hits, not net hits. So that calculation is applied before the spell is resisted. However, all is not lost.

• Ritual spells don't go through intervening space, they simply go from the casters to the targets - hitting nothing in between. So while the background count at the target matters, background counts and astral barriers that are "between" you and the target don't count for shit. Ignoring LOS means ignoring impediments along the LOS.
• Every extra die generated by the Edge expenditure is an "edge die".
• 6s on extra dice generated by Edge are still sixes and generate more dice. Using the magic of simple calculus we find that each die generates an average of 2/5 of a hit when edge is spent.

So in your example, our hero is rolling:

2 things:

1) hits are capped, not net hits. as such, you're looking at 23 hits.
2) the mages have spent more than that, because they have bought and bound a focus (you've calculated it into their dicepool).

that being said, you can just screw with the dragon's head... there are ways of dealing damage that are not based on direct combat spells. the dragon will need to be able to counterract combat spells (the direct approach... though arguably an indirect combat spell can be cast ritually, and will not allow the dragon to benefit nearly half as much from counterspelling. that does increase the drain, of course, but since your hits are capped anyways, move the initiate team's focus to their drain dicepool, and add in a power focus instead if you like). additionally, the dragon will need to safeguard against health spells (decrease a mental attribute to 0, and one guy sustains and they all repeat the ritual, this time the dragon doesn't have any spellcasting apart from his wards/whatever and likely won't resist a direct combat spell anyways... assuming the dragon's bound spirits don't go berserk and kill it for you, that is). the dragon must also guard against manipulation spells (horrible, horrible things can be done to it with mental manipulations, and damage can be done with ignite, incapacitation can also be accomplished using turn to goo, petrify, etc; repeat attack as for health spells). finally, the dragon must guard against illusion spells which incapacitate it... agony is the only one that i know has a guaranteed incapacitate, the rest say "at GM's discretion" (again, repeat ritual with damaging spell for best results)

so that means it needs 4 different categories of counterspelling bonuses... not looking so good for the dragon now, is it?

(not to mention that if you do hit it with an indirect combat spell, counterspelling officially only adds to damage resist, and won't make the spell fizzle... repeat for best results)

oh, and just for the record... if you can pull it off, an astral/mana window spell can be very handy for assensing people who sit around behind a astral/mana barriers... seems like the exact kind of spell a ritual sorcery team relying on being able to assense the target to craft sympathetic links would want to invest in (start by targeting the lair, or it's door, and you can proceed to scout the rest of the lair as if with clairvoyance/astral clairvoyance. note that this also helps a lot with scouting the location, should the team have to go in physically, though obviously hidden defensive devices may not be noticed.)

Jaid, I did note it. They have the skills nessisary to craft the foci and the lodge at cost, they bought the kits to do so. It would take time, a massive amount of it, which is covered in the time they took to aquire 12million and 200 karma collectively. Given that they're a magical group of dragon slayer following mages, it really isn't unreasonable to think that their entire focus is towards being able to slay dragons.

Talia is still working through the thread.

However, one thing jumps out at me almost at once: I don't think you have factored in the making of the symbolic link. Use the "Creator is personally unfamiliar with the target" modifer for threshold = 16. Interval = 1 day. (p.29, Street Magic).

Edit: you haven't. 24 hours is still your absolute limit.

There's also a few more things you haven't taken into account wrt Counterspelling, fyi -- new post on these.

Making of the symbolic link has already been mentioned. Please factor this into your time, skills, and resources. You have not assensed the dragon until you tell me exactly how you are doing it -- combat turn by combat turn.

From p.12:

actually, he took care of the crafting of the sympathetic link... he rushed the job, making it take half the time (interval 12 hours) and then simply generated a sufficiently large dice pool to accomplish the task in a single interval.

as with all detection spells, touch range on mana window and astral window is deceptive; you cast the spell on the person you are giving the new sense to, and the sense can extend out to a certain distance. all they need is an accomplice (ally spirit recommended, but not required) within range of the dragon's lair, to target their spell on, and then the ally's master can look through it's eyes and whatnot.

the astral window spell at extended range can be cast by the ritual team at force 10 and most likely go through the barrier easily (a force 30 barrier would statistically be needed to block it; we could go lower than force 10 spell, but the range on that means you can look as far as 1 km, which means the subject of the spell need not be terribly close.

of course, if there was a way to increase the range of a detection spell similar to the way to increase/decrease the AOE of a area spell, we could really get some ridiculous range, and could probably cast from several miles away.

in any event, 1 km should be sufficient to keep the dragon from knowing where to strike, and the subject need not be there for very long (ideally the subject would be a perception adept, but that's just overkill)

Ignore me ... brain fart!

The big problem is that this does rely on as an astrally projecting magician assensing the dragon - the dual natured dragon. We can see where this can go wrong, can't we? The dragon will probably notice the magician. If he does, then he has one of two choices. He can kill the lone astral idiot; he can follow the astral idiot back to the team and then kill him; he can wait and send his spirits on remote remote services to find him and kill the entire team; he can send watcher spirits out to observe them and report back to him on their actions via his mental link with the spirit, which would make their plan quite obvious. He could then easily disrupt either the ritual spellcasting or the crafting of the link by having spirits attack the team or doing it himself during the ritual (since one member of the team must be astrally active).

In the end, I believe that removing the random element is a mistake. If everyone plays perfectly, then the game will always end in a stalemate. The random element is the only thing that prevents the game from reaching Nash Equilibrium, particularly in a challenge like this.

i dunno, i mean, do dragons just kill every projecting mage they see?

When they invade the dragon's heavily fortified World War III-proof top secret underground lair, I'd imagine so.

i guess if the dragon never leaves that lair, that'd be an issue. i mean, the assensing test is definitely the weak link, but i don't think it's all that hard to overcome unless there are tight time constraints. put out a few quiet feelers, find out a few general things about the dragon's habits, and then just have a mage hang out on the astral at a location the dragon frequents. you just need a few quick seconds to get a look at the dragon, and you're done.

i wasn't aware of the 24-hour limitation. that seriously, seriously favors the defender.

The use of mana window to look into the lair would most likely trigger and one of the numerous intrusion detection spells that a sane dragon would have quickened, such as detect magic. Actually, detect magic would be the exact spell that this triggers, meaning that the dragon would be aware of the clairvoyant intrusion. For that matter, as a dual being he might notice the magical floating point-of-view, assense it, and use its signature to track down the mage. All he's have to do is send a spirit with Search to find the character that cast the spell. It is less dangerous, but it is still very dangerous.

Also there is nothing preventing a ritual casting of Astral Window by touching the subject and then allowing the subject to use the spell at range, and an extended range version of all Detection Spells is RAW, hell the book even tells you to simply take the existing Drain Value +2.

*Edit*

Sure, it's still dangerous, but under Talia Invierno's wargame rules the Dragon doesn't get to spend Karma, so no quickened spells, no sustaining foci, ect...

He'd still get a perception test to see the floating point of view that the spell creates, since he is dual-natured. I don't know if you'd be able to use infiltration when directing a magical point of view.

You never play one shot scenarios?

LOL! Sorry, I didn't realize you were the one being in creation whose experiences were truly universal.

Hence, IMO.

But even so, don't you agree that expecting the assumption role playing in such a "challenge" scenario is a bit much?

I mean, take a look at Tarantula's group. Does that really look like role playing to you? Cause it looks like roll playing to me.

Sorry. I forgot that adding IMO to the end of a post negates the insults in it.

You are an incredibly sensitive person if you read any insults in what I said.

so it's not going to be the most character-driven scenario ever. that doesn't preclude roleplaying, and it doesn't mean roleplaying can't make a difference in the outcome.

For all that it's worth, I do agree with Vaevictis' point of view.

One-shots such as that scenario that really is only here to verify the statement if high-grade Shadowrunners can kill a dragon in 24 hours with ease isn't really 'roleplay', it's more 'rollplay'.

However, that doesn't mean that you should look out for loop-holes in the rules itself, but rather min-/maximize(not 'munchkinize', but instead 'powergame' ) a character to work in order to prove this theory.

As the goal is simply to kill the dragon and the team is considered the winner as long as at least one team-member lives, trying to create a magician with several points of magic attribute and unleashing a super-powerful spirit that would tear the dragon apart with ease, but almost dying/getting incapacitated from the drain is absolutely okay. As long as the spirit is stronger than the dragon (easily possible, as long as you do have the necessary magic attribute to summon an astral being to double your magic that in the end exceeds the dragon's power), and you do defeat the guard spirits of the dragon, you win.

A really strong spirit backed up by minor astral companions, be them other spirits, mages, a bunch of watchers, all it takes is to get the powerful spirit into close combat with the dragon.

Now the question would rather be what you'd consider to be really strong and still summonable. Spirits with a force of 12+ are stronger than the normal dragons listed in the rulebook, but the drain code is very much a world of pain (although perhaps survivable), however, summoned just for this one little job is absolutely worth-wile.

i object to the idea that there's a big difference.

also, character-driven storybuilding doesn't seem to be what Talia's talking about. by 'roleplaying', i believe she is talking about tactics and decisions made during actual play, rather than what's planned out ahead of time. which is part of why i object to the idea that there's a big difference.

May I use bounded loops?

As long as it's technically possible by the rules, you might try it, but I doubt that you're going to manage to find an eternal loop, same with the summoning loop that was impossible to begin with because of the 1-summoned spirit-limit.

So what? Special attributes like Magic or Force don't add up, and neither do mental. In the end, the most powerful spirit that can inhabit you is limited by twice the magic rating of the magician who summoned it.

I think when you channel your magic attribute is replaced by the spirits magic attribute. This means that your magic can theoretically keep doubling.

EDIT: Damn too slow. Also note that your resist mana spells with whatever is the lowest attribute, yours or the spirits.

Well, here’s a rough outline of my plan, since this thread seems to just be rehasinh ways to make the dragon’s head explode.

Team is:
Conjurer (Secondary specialty is detection magic)
Hacker Adept (Secondary specialty is EW)
Pornomancer Adept (Secondary specialty is heavy weapons)
Anti-mage (Secondary specialty is conjuring)
Drone rigger (Secondary specialty is hardware/electronics)
Close Combat Troll (secondary specialty is demolitions and engineering)

Equipment (rough)
Many heavy weapons
Sealed Armor, ultrasound sensors
A near army of drones
Including:

Throw away drones of various types
(even if their weapons don’t scratch the dragon, the fact that their bullets are stopping in mid-air is a pretty good indicator that an invisible dragon is <right there>)

Engineering Drones
(Set up for setting off bombs and traps (slow, extra armor, fireproof, etc). Equipped with thermal lances for cutting through stuff, no real combat ability.

Re-broadcast/EW Drones
Drones with a variety of rebroadcast and anti-jamming equipment

Sensory Denial Drones
These generate thermal smoke, play a bunch of really loud noises, and give of random bright flashes of light, they also have several canisters of ‘really horrid smelly stuff’ which will be sprayed everywhere to defeat smell based sense. The sound and light are both generated on a semi-random timer so that a person with the appropriate key (and cyberears and eyes or the helmet mounted equivalents) can mostly tune out the drone.

Mobility Drones
These drones are equipped with things like gecko taped feet, rock climbing claws, cable anchors, etc. They are to provide a traversable path for the characters and the drones. For example, they could cross a pit by climbing on the walls, then leave steel cables anchored on either side of the pit that can be traversed by the rest of the drone army.

Dragon killing drones
These are the drones set up with weapons likely to actually kill the dragon. In an attempt to avoid being defeated by a single magical defense, they come in packs and use a variety of different weapons (for example, bullet barrier will not protect against AV lasers or AV missiles).

As is obvious almost all the teams resources is sunk into the drone army.

The plan is roughly as follows:

The pronomancer adept and hacker adept do whatever legwork can be squeezed into the time frame.

Once the assault starts.
Open with EW and sensory attacks. The whole area will be covered with thermal smoke, and be blasted with very loud noises, bright flashes of light, and horrible smells

The pronomancer adept will stay outside the lair with a collection of heavy weapons (he will be astrally perceiving too). His main job is to paste the dragon if it comes up out of the lair. If the dragon killing drones are in good enough supply, he will have a few under his command as well. (It’s no coincidence that the guy with the best social skills is in the least danger… And because he’s that good, everyone else thinks it was their idea.)

The engineering drones will trundle up to the lair doors and begin to cut their way through. After the door is breached, a bunch of throw away drones and sensory-dep drones will be sent in to scout things out. As they will not be able to spot an invisible dragon with sensors, they will simply fill the area will bullets and note anywhere the bullets stop un-expectedly. Any other living things in the lair (or statues, or pieces of furniture, for that matter) will all be shot multiple times, to make sure they are not the dragon hiding behind a shapechange spell. If the first drone wave is not immediately pasted, the next wave is the EW drones, who seed the area with sensors, rebroadcast nodes, and so on. The third wave is the characters, and the dragon killing drones. The engineering drones follow behind, in case there is something else that needs to be cut open.

The team will be relying on ultrasound, drone sensors, and the anti-mages spirit pack to provide information. The conjurers spirit pack will be held in reserve for the main event. The conjurer will be running detect (dragon) plus whatever other detection spells seem reasonable.

The idea against the dragon itself is that is will be mostly senseless (no hearing, sight, or smell available to detect with, and astral perception doesn’t penetrate the smoke either. The dragon’s magically abilities will hopefully be shut down as well, leaving the actual killing to the close combat troll and the dragon killing drones.

Things to worry about:

A much smaller dragon
What is the dragon shapechanges into a mouse upon geting past the blast doors, and a significant part of the lair is in mouse scale?

Topology too difficult for the drones to navigate
Hopefully the mobility drones will help things along here. Of course the dragon could take most of them out, as they would have to be the first ones into the mobility restricted area…

A cowardly dragon
The dragon attempts to flee the lair relatively early, and has some way to leaving the PCs trapped inside. I left forces outside to try to deal with the dragon running away. A dragon in the clear sky should be dogmeat vs. several heavy weapon drones.

Any other comments?

Still focusing on infinite loops? Which part of the earlier ruling was not clear?

But, yet again: if we run into another infinite loop, discard that tactic -- because it's not allowable in this scenario. Save your arguments for why that's unfair for your face-to-face GM.

Can we get back to non-munchkinised tactics?

Toturi's right. When you give people a vacuum scenario like this, anthing that's specifically allowable by RAW is fair game, including munchkin stuff and infinate loops.

Don't like it? Complain to the guys who do the eratta.

Sorry for coming into this thread late, but has anybody thought of adding a character with a few 6/6 Contacts?