No. I am reacting to his response when asked not to comment about a touchy subject in such a manner.

I thought it was because our entertaining and insightful banter helps pass the day. Or perhaps there are groovy gamer types at DoH who play SR after hours. Because I doubt anyone could consider a site where we have debates about whether the law would protect trolls from being charged higher apartment rents than dwarves is going to be the starting point for the dissolution of the Union.

And the fact that every third thread becomes a debate on ammunition types isn't going to worry anyone. No-one's going to overthrow the US government with home firearms (a web-server maybe).

But then again, if Dumpshock can be re-classified as anti-american, then I suppose it's one more bit of ammunition to justify the spending of all your (US Dumpshocker's) tax dollars.

Raises brown middle finger at xenophobes everywhere.

-Khadim.

The drain is not only that of a Force 4 Fireball.

That fireball is only Stun damage. It's a headache. Admittedly it's a bad headache, but once the run is over our Mage can go home, go to bed and get a good nights sleep and he'll be fine the next day.

The stunball however is Physical damage. It's internal bleeding and heart attacks and brain aneurysms and twisted intestines and strangled testicles and body parts dieing because of the sheer quantity of magical energy that's coursing through the magician's body. That's days of rest to recover at the very minimum, and by rest we mean doing absolutely nothing from waking up in the morning till going to bed at night.

This is a case of the players looking at mechanics and not bothering to take into account the actual "real world" (it's real to the character at any rate) repercussions.

So, Mr Stunball picks up X points of Physical damage from those Force 12 Stunballs he flung off. Well, his fingers might be bleeding for no apparent reason, which is going to make it rather difficult for him to hold only thing, blood is a rather slippery substance. He might have burst his eardrums and his ears are then bleeding, which makes hearing anything until he's healed rather difficult. How about bleeding eyeballs? That should make it difficult to see anything until it's fixed, won't it?

If making them bleed isn't your thing, how about other body injuries. We're dealing with Magic here, so there only needs to be a tenuous connection between the injury and the effect.

The arm he was casting with decides to break. No idea why. He develops paralysis from the waist down (which incidentally would cause his bowels and bladder to void about now). His stomach might rupture, spilling stomach acid into parts of his body that really shouldn't have contact with them, meaning that he's going to be in a hell of a lot of pain and probably very distracted. The list goes on (and I'm sure you are evil enough to come up with a good possible list).

Of course, this is all caused by magic, so after the requisite time in bed (as per the healing rules on page 242) he'll be fine, but there's the scars to consider. That broken arm? Screwed up the muscles a bit on that side, so there's physio for the next month or so. The ruptured stomach means he won't be able to eat spicy food again for a little while until it's finished growing back the lining properly. His pretty face has a ugly red line running across it that will require plastic surgery to remove. The broken leg is a bit shorter than the other one now, so his pants no longer fit correctly, and he needs special boots to be able to walk straight. Things like that.

With all this the character (and I mean character, not player) is going to be a little bit cautious in throwing those overpowered spells around so willy-nilly. That hurt, and the memory of what went down would probably require a Willpower check to be able to do it, with the Threshold increasing every time from the remembered pain.

Perhaps a couple of Force 6 spells would work better?

The players are beating you with mechanics. Don't try and fight back with mechanics, otherwise it becomes a one-upsmanship game, and no one wins that. Beat them with consequences. The over-cast should only be a last resort, it should never be first choice, so make sure the players understand why my showing their characters the results.

Enjoy
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