The blurb on Page 192 is a bit vague for me.

"A power focus adds its Force to all tests in which the Magician's Magic is included."

Does this mean you effectively raise your Magic by the Power Foci's Rating? So if I have a Power Focus Rating 2 and Magic 4, I'd have Magic 6 for all intents and purposes?

No. When you have a test where you'd roll Magic, you'd add the Force of the focus, but your Magic doesn't change-so no additional adept powers or higher Force spells without overcasting and the like.

Ahh so it's a bit like the Spellcasting/Summoning Foci only a bit more general in that it applies to almost all Magic-related rolls? Other than counterspelling that is.

Thanks, that clears it up!

Follow up: Think it's worth it for a Mystic Adept who'll have an effective Magic attribute of 2 from 6 (due to adept powers eating up 4 points)?

That all depends on what else you might buy with the same money, bond with the same karma, etc, etc. I mean, when in doubt, yeah. Sure. It's worth it to have a power focus, period.

So why was the Power Focus reduced in power from 3rd to 4th? Is it because you can Initiate to raise your magic, and they didnt want you to be able to raise it with a power focus too?

Especially if you're playing a mystic adept who is heavy on the "adept" side or a magician who hasn't fully filled out Magic, you will also want to take into account just how high your Sorcery or Conjuring skills already are. As Ancient History notes, the power focus doesn't change your spellcasting/conjuring Magic at all -- and that's what limits the number of hits that can be valid in the first place. If you have a natural maximum of 2, overcast of 4 -- you probably won't need the power focus to reach that number of hits.

It's particularly nasty if you are rolling an opposed test. Your maximum hits cannot be higher than your Magic (twice Magic, if overcasting). Your target, however, has no such restriction.

Assuming you already have decent Sorcery / Conjuring skillgroups: the higher your Magic, the more use you will get out of a power focus.

On the other hand, there are other uses for a power focus as well, such as adept powers (notably Attribute Boost, Empathic Healing, Enthralling Performance, Motion Sense, Pain Relief, and Three-Dimensional Memory) and metamagic (notably Cleansing, Cognition, Filtering, Invoking, Masking and Extended Masking, Sensing, and Somatic Control). It's important to remember that a power focus only adds its rating to tests. It won't aid adept powers or metamagics with a duration, range, or other variable effect based on Magic alone.

[/edit]I wasn't involved with the creation of SR4, but it is easy to see why a limitation was put in place given the "open Force" nature of spells and spirits-imagine a character with Magic 6 and a Force 4 power focus overcasting at Force 20 directly following character generation.

You're limited to a Force 2 Power Focus on chargen, but point taken. A Force 15 spirit on chargen is... unfortunate.

-Frank

Thank you for the clarification guys, it's hard to wrap your head around all these different worlds.

A semi-related follow-up question:

If you have Magic 6 but utilize 3 points as power points for a Mystic Adept, thereby having an effective Magic 3, could you leave Astral Defense to any Summoned Spirits?

Would a Power Foci still be a decent investment even if you have say a 5-6 Summoning skill; possibly with a specialization or maybe 5-6 without the spec?


Seems like I'm min-maxing, I know, but I'm making an updated version of my first Street Sam into a Gunslinging Mystic Adept. Yeah, a helluva leap I know.

But I didn't wanna just turn him into an all-or-nothing shooter. Hence, Conjuring (and Spellcasting to a point). He'll get stuck with Force 3 Spirits, Force 6 if I oversummon, but it's going to be pretty sweet.


So the question is: Can I rely on Summoned Spirits for Astral Defense? Can I still put a Power Focus 2 to good use even with a high magical skill?

Well, your spirit isn't exactly going to stand in front of you whenever someone takes an astral swing at you, if that's what you mean. If you're talking about spell defense, there are three spirits in Street Magic with the Magical Guard power that can help shore you up in that direction.

Re: Power Foci -> With relatively high Magical Skills and low Magic, you won't see a great deal of improvement on standard spellcasting and summoning with a power focus-generally, you'd be moving from 5-6 dice (1 guaranteed hit) to 7-8 dice (2 guaranteed hits). However, a power focus would help all your Magic-related tests. For example, you might decide to take Enthralling Performance with Pistols (Trick Shots).