Two runner teams, nothing missing, no one wonders. Riiight.

Whoever stored the Zombie might be a little more paranoid than that.

I'm sorry, maybe I misread the topic. Did the OP want ideas for how to not geek mages, or did he want people to criticize his GM'ing?

At this point, Hank, I'm not even sure anymore.

Chris

How to deal with the mage was already answered. Like on page 1. After that it's repetition and GM criticism. Fun, isn't it?

I guess he gets a bonus.

Seriously though, he has been given a lot of advice on how to deal with the subject. He has even been informed that his rulings differ from those of canon (on the side of leniency), and that adjusting those might make a big difference. As far as I can see, he does not like any of the advice, and just wants to argue. Who are we to disappoint?

I very much like to argue out of principle.

I also pointed out it doesn't make a difference.
alot of the "advice" has been "do it properly." with no explainations of "how."

just because he's a cyberzombie does not mean that a corp made him. which also does not mean that he is -4 essence or more...

hank I was asking originally for Ideas on how to have the game not digress into a race to kill the other teams mage. so far the only suggestions have been to "do it properly" which isn't helpful.

Sorry if I was harsh, what do you really need to know? Your problem is primarily that the mage throws down too powerful of shit, right? If you really feel that it is ruining your game, either confront him in game or out of game (if he is correctly using the rules).

If you're trying to figure out how to keep runners from geeking the mage first, try D&D. If mages weren't worth killing first, we wouldn't do it.

Its because of what they can do that people want to play them, its also what they do that make us want to fill them full of lead as soon as absolutely possible. I dont think there is a way to change this aspect. I may be wrong though. Even in SR3 with its terribly high drain, we still geeked the mage first.

You have to reduce what they can do to do that. Overcasting is a big part of it, as is using edge. An overcasted force 12 stunball using edge will do >20 stun on average. Hell, a force 8 will do ~13 stun and require 5 success to stop it.

Making that impossible helps. Assuming that the absurd % numbers for mages in SR have no more relevance than the absurd skill table numbers do is another. If you have countermagic in many situations and have a typical cap of 4-6 success with typical of 3-4 it's possible to resist much more effectively.

You can make wards more effective, by assuming that they remove success from spells rather then providing a bonus to resist. You can increase drain.

There are lots of other things you can do, but you need to figure out what you want the game to play like first.

Actually there was quite a bit of advise that went into details of "how", you just didn't like where it led.

Of course, the ultimate advise of all is that it's your table, so if you don't want earth shattering Mages roaming your campaigns then don't aprove such characters.

That one seems good. Makes sense and is balanced. And, it doesn't prevent the PCs from doing something, it just rachets up the consequences.


Here are a couple house rules my group has been using to bring sanity to direct combat spells and bound spirits:

1. A damage resistance test for direct combat spells is made using Body. Each hit scored reduces the DV by 1.

2. Spirits
a. Spirits are NPCs, and for this reason they are ultimately controlled by the gamemaster. Normally, the summoner may decide the particulars of how the spirit carries out services (except for remote services). However, these choices may be overruled by the gamemaster.
b. The gamemaster always decides if/when spirits use Edge, and spirits often prefer to hold at least some Edge back to use to avoid being disrupted. The summoner is free to suggest to the gamemaster when the spirit may want to use Edge.
c. Bound spirits are an effort to handle if more than one is on hand or actively performing a service. For each additional bound spirit not on standby beyond the first, the magician has a -2 modifier to all tests, similar to sustaining a spell. Note that this does not apply to unbound spirits, so a magician may have an unbound spirit and a bound spirit present or active at the same time with no modifier.

As I said before, it's not particularly balanced since it'd cripple Mystic Adepts who often have to overcast to do anything over Force 2 even when working on relatively minor tasks. Overcasting is typically only a major issue with combat spells since they're about the only thing that gets a flat guaranteed increase in performance as Force scales upwards. Consider taking the path of least resistance and concentrating on nerfing combat spells rather than the entire drain mechanic if that's really what has you guys so worried. Alternatively, you could countermand the SR4 FAQ and let MystAds use their full magic attribute to determine when they're overcasting which would fix this particular problem and is probably a good idea anyway (Seriously, fuck the FAQ). That said, in this particular instance the guy's clearly an uber mage with a focus on combat casting and Djinni mentioned the guy routinely scores many hits, so I'm going to go out on a limb and say he's got a magic of 5 or so anyway and could still severely cripple or destroy most opposing opponents by casting at Force 5 (Or 4; whatever) for a high DV regardless, and likely could split his dicepools to double cast Force 5 combat spells and demolish people that way if he needed to as well.

With the overcasting does both stun and physical would you have to resist both sides seperately? Like if you overcast and the Drain is 5 and you get 3 hits on Drain Resistance are you taking 2S and 2P or 5S and 2P? If it is the latter then congrats you can overcast like 2-3 times before falling unconscious no matter what you do.

Chris

How about drain is always unresisted. First, it's a serious damper on tac nuking mages. Second, it speeds up gameplay. Tada! I luv my houserules.

[edit:Disclaimer] This is NOT in any possible way a serious suggestion to the topic of increasing drain to control problematic mages. I don't apologize for the inconvenience, though.

How about the Magician quality costs 40 BP? Would that work for you?

Chris

Nah, that's too obvious. Also, would not stop him from tac nuking, just weaken every other aspect of his the character.

Sorry, the drain is always unresisted irritated me. I tend to play support mages and as such drain is always unresisted would make them completely useless. Keep in mind you have problems with direct damage AOE spells, but you have to consider the impact of your house rules on the whole of magic. I'm honestly sorry for you if you have not had a good support mage with your party before, it brings out a whole new useful and frankly just cool side to magic. Also, people tend not to freak out and try to destroy the mage first if he is a support mage. My mages tend to be REALLY hard to kill, and stay in the back shooting things till we run into something unexpected, then I alter the fabric of reality and help take care of it.

Chris

Malicant, you can only have 35BPs worth of positive qualities.

Chris

In creasing the cost of the mage quality has always seemed like a good idea to me.

Dude, that was a joke. A snide remark towards any houserules to increase drain. Borderline bait. I will put in a disclaimer now.

I would just like to say, that you seem to have an idea of how the world of Shadowrun is, and it doesn't jive with your players. You don't want to have magical defenses everywhere, you don't want to geek the mage, you don't want mages walking all over the populace, but you allowed someone who built a pure and utter combat mage into the game. I hate to tell you, if you build a true combat machine with metal they can kill just as well, and usually faster, than a mage can. It is just impossible to build something like that and still have build points left for supplementary skills that REALLY should matter. That is one thing people typically don't take into account when they look at the insane builds that you can make if you throw away the ability to do other things.

I haven't seen your players character sheet, but I have to assume he probably doesn't have much in the way of Athletics, Perception, social skills, etc. You know, the important supplementary ones. You want to kill a group of people 9 meters apart, split your dice pool and throw 4 grenades an initiative pass at them. Killing is easy in SR, it is the other stuff that is hard.

Chris

I wonder if the player knows, that he can cast multiple spells a once. With a little less overcasting he could do even more damage.

Ah, for some reason- probably lack of sleep- I thought you were serious. I've actually heard making drain unresistable suggested as an acceptable solution for someone's mage problems before. So, it got to me.

Chris

I would say 2S and 2P. For my group adoption of house rules needs to be unanimous, and the other way would never fly.

Always suffering drain is a BAD thing. You might as well just throw that build away, cause you ain't surviving. There are better ways to limit magic power than this. Increasing all drain codes by 2 would be better than this, and even that probably wouldn't make the particular mage in question change his ways or playing style.

I wouldn't mind too terribly having it that way, arathian. I don't think it will solve much with the current problem because apparently the guy soaks down to 0 most of the time anyway.

Chris

It seems kind of silly to suggest house rules gimping mages when the GM in question doesn't even want to use the canon rules to limit them. And the canon rules have plenty of ways to keep mages in line, without making them feel like their character is completely useless.

Someone who hyper-specializes in magic should be badass - if you don't want badass PCs in your game, then tell them you're running a lower-powered game. Setting the power level is the GM's responsibility. A player using the standard char-gen rules isn't magically going to know that a legal starting character is "unreasonable" in that particular game.

Exactly

I was thinking... why not leave drain just as it is... F/2... until mages overcast... at which point it becomes F... Overcasting mega manaball = quick trip to dead... But casting a F = M Manaball = good damage, and much much less drain.

Or much less harsh, switch it to F when overcasting but make all drain even overcast stun. So you guy overcasts too much, and drops to the floor. Now his team either has to carry him around or leave him for the bad guys. Gives more oppurtunities for interesting times, scales back some of the overcasting but without making him never want to do so. So he might overcast a time or two, but would make sure it doesn't happen alot.

That seems like it works too...

For some reason I really like this idea. Of course you dont have mages bleeding out of every orifice with this (Which I like), but it does make overcasting more and more scary the higher your character advances. Still, like Glyph said, you should do what you can do within the rules before house ruling.