I have personally had no experience with the problems people seem to profess with mages being incredibly overpowered even right out of the box. However, I've heard so much about it I figured I would throw up a place for people to come and share their stories. What happened, whodunit, and how is what I'm looking for.

This came from Buster's houserule thread where he was thinking of giving normals unlimited essence to help them keep up with mages. I just can't see how this would even remotely be needed so I thought I would let you guys give me and some others (Fortune, Cain, etc.) some examples.

Chris

Since I only use the BBB, this example is surely tame, but...

I was playing a mage, right out of the box, as you say. We're about to go into combat, so I cast Force 4 Improved Reflexes on myself, giving me 4 IPs, and easily resist the drain. I then use my 4 IPs against the ghouls we were fighting to cast low-Force Stunballs, four times every three seconds. Resisting four to six stun damage with Willpower every IP, and with no more than a box or two of drain to show for it. It made my partner, the hacker, feel awfully useless: he might be able to hack into the Lone Star database, but you can't kill someone with hacking, while you can kill large numbers of people all day long with low-force Stunballs.

Just wait for people to come along with stories of Ally spirits and Possession, Ritual Assassin teams and Bloodzilla, they'll show you what the deal is.

...OK I'll wade in...

In all the discussions I have read and partaken in, there is one thing I have learned. That is, I believe it really comes down the how a character is designed and played. A power hungry player can turn any type of character even a Face (as I have seen), into a "cannon" who often relegates the other PCs to becoming spectators and the NPCs, fodder.

For example, In one campaign (3rd Ed) I had a player with a Sammy elf that had a 19 Reaction. About the only thing that could beat him in initiative was a cyberzombie with maxed out move by wire, muscle toner, & reaction enhancers. If memory serves me, I believe the next highest Reaction in the group was 12 (the Rigger) and rest of the characters averaged around 7. On just about every combat when the elf was done, there wasn't much left for the other PCs to mop up except gear & credsticks.

When I adapted a run from the Missions Book as a lead in to the campaign, and it came down to the "final battle" it was something of a rude awakening. The mean nasty badass NPC Megalomaniac Mage who set the ambush had only a 5 or 6 Reaction (pretty much on par with the PC mages). Even having to roll a TN of 5 (against the NPCs TN 3) the Sammy beat the mage and his lackeys hands down and lead hosed the mage with his Alpha (pink cloud effect).

Now, on the other side of the coin, I currently have a player in my RiS campaign running the team's Hermetic Mage who actually makes a point of building a more well thought out and balanced character. Furthermore, while the character is still pretty powerful by the numbers, the player handles him with more tact and doesn't go off slinging spells at everything that moves or go travelling around with an army of elementals and watchers on call ready to sic the lot of them on whoever crosses the team's path. As a matter of fact I think he has summoned an elemental only a couple times since we started.

So I would say it really is relative to the player running the character. Not having played mages much myself as a player, I could most likely easily get even an Uber min maxed spellcaster geeked on her first run.

Well I have noticed that a person focused around summoning is really tough. Since he can bring up big nasty meat shields to beat things down. I mean a force six spirit can seriously ruin a gangs day. Though to be fair the Rigger can also ride ruin with drones, and his big heavily armored van.

on moving fast outside of vehicles

cyberware: I play a troll with hoverdisk feet! my run speed is 50/turn
magic: I alter form to a wolf. my speed is 50/turn. Then i summon a spirit and use a task for movement. Now i run over 200 mph

On shooting things
cyberware: Smartlink, gyroscopic arm, muscle toner and skill till you have 16 dice. Can go much higher. Full auto for great justice
Magic: analyze device. every hit gives +1 to understanding and using a device. Many argue this extends to guns.

on dodging things
cyberware: Movebywire3, max reaction possible 9. rank 6 dodge equates to 9 skill as well without advantages. 18 dice to dodge melee, 9 to react to gunfire. with adv, ~22 dice to dodge melee, 11 to react to gunfire.
magic: without possession or cyber, max should be 9 with increase reflexes spell, plus 6 for dodge skill, plus net hits of deflection spell. with a force 6 possession spirit, max would be 18 reaction. with a force 10 spirit, max reaction becomes 24.

As i become more exhausted, Coherency decreases to limit of zero.

Actually he didn't overcast for any of them. Just having four, or five max force spirits is rough to deal with. Since numbers can make such a huge difference in a fight in SR. Also I find that mana static works pretty well to ruin his day, since to be such a good summoner he has weak spots. Drones can be the same way however. I'm not saying it is unbeatable, I'm just saying it can be a bit of a paperwork issue. To be fair I can't complain about it since I rather like giving each of his spirits their own personality and quirks.

just think of those nice spells that alter someones attributes . . lower charisma for example to 0 and the targetted character stands there and says:"bleeh" @.@
shape earth . . force 8 for example is really awesome, as you can quickly hollow out an area under basically everything and then have it collapse . . if there's nothing above the soil then you can burry a whole tank with that against the pretty low treshhold instead of having to work against the higher treshhold of spells acting against the tank directly . . high force controll spells . . controll actions, controll thoughts, controll emotions . . all that nice brain rapey stuff . . and it comes in area effect too! . . so there's a whole bunch of red samurai . . i cast controll mob thought or however it is called and have my own small army . . or things like telekinetic spells . . high enough force and you just lift up the target about 200 feet of the ground and let them drop . . and that's just what's possible using standard spells . . improved invisibility . . just make someone who's about to cross the street invisible . . or the incoming truck . .

Well, on my current Mage's very first run I had a Spirit of Man run Conceal on the 4-man party, sustained various illusion and mind controlling spells (one on the foci, the other by myself) that allowed us to bypass security and many fights, and oh, changed the appearance of our getaway vehicle several times to throw off pursuit.

Did I mention I also cast Interference to mess around with Drones following us (TM tripped an alarm).

And of course during the ensuing firefight to get out of the facility we were once again hidden from sight, I believe for a total of -8 to Perception while I had a Trid Phantasm group run off a different direction.

One Mystic Adept corpsec saw right through it of course. So I overcast with a Force 8 Death Touch and OSK'd him with a punch. My mage's rep is now tilted towards unarmed combat specialist / mystic adept even though he's well rounded; that punch outta nowhere scared the crap out of the other corpsecs.

This was the very first run and our GM was testing us to see how far he could push things. Now there's magical security everywhere and LoneStar has a "rival" called MageBlade that I'm proud to say was created by my GM because of my antics in the runs afterwards.

The starting character who took control thoughts and mob mind and had all the groups enemies kill each other and themselves. He took a little stun, they were dead. We banned the mind control spells.

Oh yes it can. Force is irrelevant. Drain is what matters.

Mob Mind 5 = DV 6
Stunball 11 = DV 6

Stunball 11 does 11 stun automatically + more stun equal to any hits you get from the spellcasting test. That's more than enough to take out a whole room full of people with one shot and it's easily doable by a starter character.

Multi-casting Stun Ball is pure, unmitigated evil if your opponents don't have any counterspelling support; even with a split dicepool you're still likely to be beating their Will and the drain is shockingly manageable.

KK: Oh, I forgot to mention, he *did* go into serious overstess. Cyberpsychosis is something of an optional rule, but he did suffer quite a few social penalties (offset from the +2 Cha bonus for being a Night One).

Additionally, IIRC Suprathyroid also directly increases Reaction.

Magic 6 is easy, how many cybersams have a stun track of 12 or higher?

Personally, I think Shadowrun is an Awakened character's game. Who the heck plays Shadowrun and doesn't want to play an Awakened character anyways? If you want to play a mundane razorboy or vanilla hacker, why wouldn't you play Cyberpunk or Cyberhero?

That is true, and that is a sign of broken system. The last few sets of characters we've done have been almost exclusively awakened. It's particularly true if you expect to play for a while. Awakened get hugely stronger over time, mundanes don't.

Night Ones? In 4th Ed?

...not yet and probably not for awhile as the 4th ED version of the SR Companion is a ways down on the list.

...there are still a few of us who GM in the past...

@G.E.M. Even so, Drugs may add one or two more to Reaction but that still falls short of 32.

Without the Bonus Attribute Point on Quickness, the character's final Quickness attribute would only be 13: 6 + 2 (Night One) + 4 (Muscle Toner) + 1 (Suprathyroid) = 13. Enhanced articulation does not increase Quickness, only reaction and adds one die to any physical skill test [M&M p.66].

I could see dropping the Bonus attribute point on Intelligence but I added that for Combat Pool purposes since Body, Quickness, and Intelligence would all start at 6 leaving 12 attribute points to be split up on Charisma, Willpower, & Strength. My model has B: 6, Q: 14, S: 6, I: 9, C: 1 (3), and WP: 5 (don't want to be total "mage-bait").

when you can afford introducing some bio like the pain editor into your system and start slinging force 10 spells without overcast, then yes, you tend to do pull ahead . . and that's not even that much karma, 4 initiations, some put into force 10 spells and some money put into the bio gear . . at about 100 karma, 150 tops, 200 karma for sure you can have done this already . .

Errr...be a successful shadowrunner by doing that exact thing? May not be the most fun to play character, but I'd hire him if I thought heavy combat was a possibility on a run.

I wouldn't hire him. Not for anything but making a mess, anyway.
As a mercenary, maybe. But stupid shadowrunners who can't hide, can't keep their heads down, and don't know how the world works make lives miserable for their employers because the slightest twist of plans and they either have to bail because they can't adapt, or they fall back on "I shoot it."

A guy like that would make a GREAT distraction for the real team, but he's never gonna play the big leagues. He just isn't cut out for anything but killing. Shadowrunners are more than killers. Killing is part of it, but it sure as hell isn't all of it.

Just depends on the run and the group attendance. If you can get a super-specialist to cover all the major areas... then that team is awesome, however, if you only have two guys and one is a combat monster and the other is a face monster, then you really aren't going to be able to sneak very well if a run comes up that requires it. Then again, with a true combat monster the face could take you part of the way till talking breaks down and clearance is required and then the combat monster can carry you the rest of the way, so if you don't mind massive body tolls and Lone Star/ KE on your ass then that works. It all just depends on how you want to accomplish what you want to accomplish. If you want your GM to like you and for you to have the right tool for every occasion, then spread your skills around alot with minimal cyber and bio and be decent at everything. Then if the game lasts long enough you'll be good or better at everything. If you want to solve everything with brute force then I see a Troll Mystic Adept(possession tradition) in your future. Contrary to the popular adage violence solve ALL problems if you apply enough of it. As Stalin said, "No man, No problem."

Chris

Moon-Hawk, do we need to have a therapy session?

Chris

PS: Be nice to me, it's my birfday.

*Shrugs* I've never had any problems with magic being overwhelming, something that people tend to forget is that a Mage dropping magical tac-nukes all over town is going to draw all the wrong kinds of attention, and you simply can't trust that you'll always have the time to clean up where you've just signed your name in glowing astral ink.

No, I stick by my saying, a good Mage has an assortment of ways to kill you with her mind, a great Mage has the wisdom to use her trusty predator instead.

As to the 200 karma thing, I had a third ed character that I ran quite awhile. He was a mundane. His name was Car. Originally he was a thief. Then became a decker, then a face. Then a mercenary. Basically he ended up a reniassance man. He did lots of adventures that we adapted to third [Dreamchipper, Imago, Mercurial, et al]. Eventually he finished the Survival of the Fittest campaign right before we switched to 4th ed. Then he retired as an international fixer. We did run a high powered game. His team consisted of Max [Uber-shaman], Tanitha [Mistress of the Whirling Blades of Death], Zetsumei [Ninja-assassin], B.C. [Merc], and Beck [moron]. And next to these powerhouses, other than Beck, Car the reniassance man never failed to measure up. Then again the group did fit together very well. Tanitha had no patience, and less tact; Zet almost never talked, Max had no real initiave; B.C. had a soldier's take orders mentality; and Beck was a moron. To be fair Beck was played by my very best friend who is not a moron. Anyways we never had a problem with Max's Magical Mastery. Her magic ate up so much karma that she stayed pretty average [for us] in mundane areas.
Man that was a fun game. I'm not sure if this post is a total non-sequitur or not, so bear with me, it's late...scratch that it's really early.

Summary: Had no problems with mages outclassing mundanes at high levels.