When is heroes going to be back? /sigh

Ok anyways...

My game has been running for 8 months and as it's my first SR game since 2nd ed, I was slow to get new books and even use all of the rules.

Now I have a mage who has spent 51 points of karma on quickened spells.

Levitate (Self - He flys) - 12
Improved Invis (Self) - 12 (5 hits)
Improved Attribute (Reflexes) - 5
Improved Attribute (Agility) - 6
Improved Attribute (Body) - 6
Improved Attribute (Strenght) - 4
Improved Attribute (Logic) - 6
Improved Reflexes - 4

I think his next is to overcast Armor spell.

I have warned him that he can't go into any buildings with any security, but since game play usually involves breaking into places, he doesn't really care.

Since quickened spells add the karma spent to any tests they make he just walks through barrier's without much fear.

Magic (7) + Counterspelling (6) + Shielding (Init 3) = 16 dice + karma spent on oppossed test.

The one time he did have to pass through a force 8 barrier, he almost lost his Improved Reflexes, but since he has 7 edge he rolled edge and got the extra hits he needed.

I don't want to slap him in the face with losing all of his karma the first time he faces something which is suppose to be really nasty, but any attempts to get him to switch from quickening to focus items has been futile. Mostly because you spend karma on those also.

Has anyone else ran into this sort of situation?
Any suggestions?

Thanks for the help.

I have to say I have never encountered this problem. My suggestions are therefore not tried and tested.
Firstly he is the invisible man, no one can see him period. He gets bounced around in a crowd, he cannot order take out over the counter, his own team mates don't know if he is in the room. It's a pain to live this way.
Second, dispelling by enemy magic users.
Third, his astral spell signatures is lighting up the astral where ever he goes like a chrismas tree on steriods and extra ampage. He is easy to track down astraly so can lead corp retrieval team straight to the team after a job.
I would point these things out to your player out of character and then if he persists, let the hammer fall.
For example while he is flying in, his levitate is dispelled.

I'd let his stupidity bring about his own doom, he is literally a fragging Christmas Tree on the Astral, and wards are cheap enough that they should be nearly everywhere, so unless Father X-Mas lives in the Barrens and plans to only shop at Stuffer Shack he is fragged.

I doubt the rest of the team is going to be nearly as forgiving of the fact that he is very likely to bring out the big guns against them the moment he trips a ward and is reconed from the Astral, which should make actually completing a mission nearly impossible.

After thinking about it for a moment, since I get a vibe from your post that you are feeling somewhat responsible for the character, offer the group as a whole a retcon now that all main rulebooks outside of Unwired is out, and IF/WHEN he doesn't take you up on it, then crush him like a bug.

Not a problem since he use's a comm for all his communication needs and flys everyplace.



Short of having several powerful mages show up, the few times I had a mages dual happen and did that, he resisted on the mages action and blew the heck out of the other one.



OK so this was something that I am a bit confused on. Does the astral signature get left every place he goes or just at the point where spells are cast? Because he only casts these things from his magical lodge.



I wish, he has 28 dice to resist being dispelled on that. With the option of throwing 12 more karma at it for a total of 40 dice.

He is permanently invisible? No bus driver sees him? No troll out jogging? Not even his team mate shooting at the enemies behind him? Not even that nice woman at the bar he would like to get to know? Or the team medic trying to stabilise him after he caught said bus. Or the drone pilot of the dozens of drones his flight path crosses.

Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

Now add that he can't hide at all on the astral, and leaves his signature all over the place, and so makes tailing/attacking him with spirits very easy.

...I'll never forget the time the invisible mage on our team with multiple quickened spells had the jump on everyone and took off down the hallway moments before my character let loose with an airburst IPE HE grenade I declared she was shooting at the top of the initiative.

...hot damn, his move made my Cajun rigger Josie look like a Rhodes Scholar.

...also made for a greasy mess in the hallway.


...anybody bring the Tostitos?

--Josie L

When the Grimoire came out, and with it the first quickened spells for SR1, we quickly came to a gentleman's agreement that our mages (3 to 4 at that time) would not quicken spells such as reaction, stat or other enhancing spells, since it made the samurais utterly useless (that was even pre-shadowtech, I think). Worked out well ever since, mages still could get cyber if they really wanted more initiative.

Even better, not only does Father X-Mas glow on the Astral, but he is also a fragging Wireless leak?

I've changed my mind, don't give the moron a second chance, just crush him under the weight of his own atupidity.

If he flies everywhere, someone will pick him up - radar, or other sensors not fooled by invisibility.

Next question:

How do you treat the invisibility spell regarding items?

1. Assume everything in the characters possession becomes invisible.
2. Assume only the items the character had in possession at the time of initial casting invisible.

Personally the way I have always treated invisibility is that only the items on person are also invisible. If such an item is put down it loses it and doesnt regain by just picking it back up.

IE: Unless the character literally never takes his clothes off or puts any items down firearm, ammo, armor, commlink. Then these items will become visible and end up floating around with him. The exception is that said pistol can be put under an already invisible jacket then be 'hidden' from view.

The same logic can be said for an invisible car: is the engine invisible? Sure! Until it is removed from the car.

Just my thoughts.

Two options: (1) the intensity of the magic surrounding him makes a background count (this is not technically in the nature of the rules, but it's damn cool) or (2) just have every nasty spirit that ever wanted to feed on the power of such a mage pop in for a visit. Especially shadow spirits from Street Magic, which can be all sorts of fun if you use them sinisterly. Barring that, just have Master Shedim, Free Spirits, hell maybe even a dragon (not a great) start to bother him all the time as they get attracted to the power level he's putting out.

he's gotta sleep sometime....
1-2 - morning/afternoon
3-4 - evening/night
5-6 - he's asleep!

I would be worse.
12-8a = 1-2
8a-4p = 3-4
4p-12 = 5-6
and he's alseep in two of those time zones. >=D

Is he? Is he literally a Christmas Tree? Surely you meant to say that he was lit up like a Christmas tree, or perhaps even that "he is a fragging Christmas Tree" which is a valid use of metaphor.
/pet peeve
Sorry.

To be useful: Sure, he can crash through any ward he wants, and he can expect an astral security response in 6 seconds, with a SWAT team on the way. For magic like that, you send in the big guns immediately. This is roughly as stealthy, and should expect a similar response to, "Oh no, my Rigger is literally driving a tank through Seattle and using it to bash down the gates and they keep winning."

Man - I'd have a REALLY mischievously trickster or raven shaman put a force 8 ward under an over pass on the freeway. Zooming along 90kph and BAM! Each of those spells in turn get to battle the ward.

I also love the idea of a few spirits who are just mean taking personal pleasure in making his life hell.. I can also see an insect shaman deciding he is a perfect candidate to become a host. I saw nothing there to stop a good surprise attack from a force 10 stun bolt... Then since he is invisible, whose gonna know the shaman just carted him away after dumping his com in the trash?

A house-rule way of limiting this is to count personal quickenings as foci for focus addiction. At least, I think that would be a house-rule.

sounds like the player has issues.... but really, the quickened invisibility is the only part thats actually stupid. the rest i can see the logic behind.

shows up on ultrasound, radar, echolocation... and... HOW does his team know the invisible man there is him? what happens if we get a second mr invisible running around, with a voice modulator?

if he were on my team, i would explain to him that shutting the invisibility off, quiting the team, or friendly fire were his only real options long term. and 51 karma? dang, thats a waste really.

Um, why does countermagic or shielding matter vs wards? What set of rules are you using?

This is where you traditionally break out the ultimate equalizer. Someone with more SR4 experience will have to fill in the details, but back in SR3 any time you had a problem with a mage getting too big for his britches and quickening spells all over the place and in general acting like a magical Threat, the solution was that he drew down the ultimate badass in Lone Star's arsenal: the Drone Sniper Wars rigger.

Drones generally don't care too much about invisibility; only one or two of their many different sensor systems use visual cues to pick up on people. If the mage were stupid enough to cast an Armor this wouldn't even be a problem, as Armor gives off that nice geeking glow.

Then you bring the thunder with sniper bullets from half a mile away.

I missed that.. IF he is aware of the ward, he can astrally perceive and try to pass through the ward with

Otherwise his spells oppose the ward with Force x2 vs Force x2. You cannot lend edge. The spells are acting as their own entity here. They either succeed or fail on their own....

I was wondering if someone would point that out before I got the bottom of the thread and replied.

Chris

...yeah the PC mage Josie aced above had 40+ Karma invested in his quickened spells. This was the same player who built an Adept with Improved Reflexes 3, leaving him only one MP for other powers. Damn he was fast, on occasion getting two phases before even the wired up Sammy went. Couldn't hit worth squat & when he did connect the the guard would go "...ow. that smarts." However he was excellent at drawing all of the oppos fire & catching bullets so the rest of us didn't need to. At least that was somewhat useful.

Look, you're obviously a "nice" GM and you don't want to screw your player. In fact, I'm pretty sure he's counting on exactly that. Dispelling all those spells would cost him 50+ karma, which depending on the game could "ruin" his character, and he knows you're too nice to do that.

Sit him down and say, "Look, your character is breaking the game. In searching for ways to thwart him and/or make things more difficult for him, let me assure you, I have found them." Don't tell him all your little schemes, but do go over some rules clarifications. And since you're such a nice-guy-GM, tell him that he has a one-time offer to trade in some or all of those quickenings and get the karma back. He can take your offer or not, but if not you shouldn't feel bad about letting the hammer fall with all the nasty ideas we're feeding you. I'm not advocating you single him out for bovine bombardment or anything, but with all the suggestions you're getting you can revise your idea of a realistic response to what he's doing, and some legitimate ways for it to go horribly wrong.

Actually this one is my fault. We had a long talk about his being a Hermetic mage and how he doesn't resist with Charisma. He wanted to use Logic instead but I shot that down and we kind of agreed upon counterspelling. Which had the effect of being able to add shielding.

Its been six months since that talk so i had forgotten about that house rule.

I probably need to change that back to RAW, but fact is I will need to talk to him.

Probably will take me several hours and end up in a re-roll of the character.

Actually this post will help me alot. I can show him the replies and see what he thinks =p

Thanks again for the help everyone.

This is by far the best message board I have been apart of in terms of everyone supporting each other.

Well, presumably he never astrally projects, since NONE of those spells will follow him.

A background count of 2-3 would render several of those spells next-to-worthless without permanently disabling them - they'll return to their normal force when he leaves the area.


Hell, give the team a run that requires a trip on a suborbital - he can't buy a ticket, probably wouldn't make it past security to be smuggled aboard, if he does make it aboard, the mass discrepancy would cause problems delaying the launch, and if he manages to make it past all that, he's going to have a bad, bad time when he reaches the mana warp and the internal sensors suddenly pick him up.

The other point is that an appropriate threat for him is a magic 11 or 12 mage summoning force >12 spirits and casting force >12 manabolts at the glowing figure while using their >10 dice of stealth to hide.

Its this reason he picked up the Cleanse Metamagic.

I talked to him last night about this fact too, because I did have him run into a force 12 spirit and it didn't go so well for him. He ended up using that encounter as justification of why he needed to "buff" himself more.

I want to know how the rest of the team has survived when he is so easily tracked down by anything with assensing, and when his cracking a ward is going to trigger the occasional heavy response team.

I'd have more problems keeping the PC and team alive then worrying about how to handle him.

The next time some shit breaks out in a fight, have his enemies start dismantling his spells. Seriously, have them attack the things that make him a combat monster, because once they're down, he's out that karma. Spending XP on quickened spells is a tough thing, because if the spell pops, you're out that karma.

Alternately, use something that saps force. Nimue's Salamander, a mana void, or one of those FAB strains. Some of those kinds of solutions will actually destroy the quickened spells, too.

He isn't getting it then. There is always something bigger and more badass, if he shows off it will get him and there isn't a damned thing he can do. He justified buffing himself instead of understanding what your meant, that justifies you to lay the smackdown. Followed up with a "I told you so"

You do know he'd be exceedingly vulnerable while using Cleansing, right? The background count hasn't stopped working yet, but he has to be astrally active...any non-manifested aspect-enhanced spirits around could tear him apart, easily.


And of course...carrying all those quickened spells around on runs...by now he'd be a FAB-III version of Typhoid Mary.

Hehe actually, two people have had to burn perm. edge or die from a few things he has done. Since then the party usually splits up which suits him fine since it gets him more time.

The last few missions I had to bring out the timer so that everyone gets a fair share, and he has missed out on some of the combat because the group wanted him to "keep watch"

personally he is the type of gamer most won't GM for, but since we have been friends for almost 20 years its hard to say... "this is not D&D.. why don't you sit this one out."

How much karma are you guys running on anyway? Do the sams have access to beta/delta clinics yet? Has the hacker brought his secondary skill focus up to the level of most other people's primary focus? Does the rigger have a dozen milspec drones?

So far this guy's initiated three times and carries ~60 karma worth of quickened spells. The rest of the team ought to have some pretty wiz gear for their part.

...Slymoon, Dealt with a situation similar to yours, though regarding spirit use (& abuse). This player just continued to escalate things further every time I amped things up to compensate. With a player like that even a smackdown like an NPC with a 36 ct cube o' dice DP doesn't always work as it can either egg the the player on to even greater feats of "one-upmanship" or to look for another front to exploit.

Sometimes you just have to bring the million tonne s**thammer down and say, that is it, no more.

On the cleansing thing: sure, he can cleanse a background count. But that doesn't stop the spells from being destroyed when he first enters the background count. He has to get in it to stop it.

Put him in a situation where he has to Astrally Project. as it was mentioned before He will lose all his buffs at the time.
While he was out, have Master Shedim move in. Now that would be funny.

The rest of the team doesn't have nearly the cash they probably should provided the average Karma is around 100 points.

But they do have many drones and the hackers have all their skills up and several others.

Is there a chart showing a karma / nuyen ratio as games progress?

Not really a chart, but it sounds like by most groups standards you're running a rich game. There isn't anything wrong with that if that's how your group likes to play. Our first 100+ Karma Characters didn't show up until they had been played for several years on a fairly regular basis, and I think our game runs toward the generous end of things. Rich games tend to lead to rapid development of characters who can break games, sometimes it happens quickly enough that you don't see it coming as a GM in time to nip it before it's too late. So the options you have are to seriously ratchet up the level of opposition, the rapid rise of the characters is it's own answer to the "Why hasn't it always been this tough?" question before noone knew who they were, now they are a well known splashy threat. Another option is to just give in and play an over the top high powered game with little opposition, which will probably lead to boredom and a chance to start over which you could take advantage of to set group expectations. AT the very least it sounds like it might be time to set aside a game night to have a gaming group discussion to get everyone's opinion on the game, expectations, and hash out any issues (because it sounds like this character may be causing OOC game issues if you need to carry a stopwatch) and then allow character modifications etc. as needed.

Quickening is never taken because it is so easy to loose the spells to a ward - rating 5 wards have 10 dice, you roll not THAT much more. Each spell would have to test on its own. And breaking through the ward will cause alarm.

How do you even get into a plane? You´ll never pass the magical security check without getting attention. (And hopefully the SOP is NOT sneaking invisibly onto airport territory). I´d even suggest retconning Quickening fully out of the char.

The key issue is to stop playing for power. The game favours the attacker, you can never get immune to damage. In my experience, the best way in such situations (besides talking) is NOT to increase the challenges. Might be too late in this case, but it´s easier to make the player look into fresh options rather than increasing power if he does not feel the need.

As I understand it the runners should have a net profit of somewhere around 5,000 Y per karma point. 100 karma was actually very advanced under sr3 rules; I'm assuming it's similar here.

The rest of the team should be sporting milspec hardware, hardened armor, vast drone-nets and the like.

The sam ought to be busily replacing his alphaware with betaware, even considering some delta because he's running out of Essence to cram stuff in, so much so that (if he's very unwise) he might seriously be considering the cyberzombie offer that's been floating around.

The deck--sorry, hacker--is probably at the peak of what the normal rules will allow, and should be pestering you endlessly about being able to break out past the half dozen or so Response 6 commlinks he's running his Agent Smith network army on now, and looking for other things to waste his karma on.

Noone's seen or heard from the adept since he effectively became Chuck Norris and ascended to a higher spiritual plane.

That sort of thing.

The proper way to walk that route is collecting Sustaining Foci of force 3-5 for different spell types. Drain for medium force spells is not that high, and you can change the spell configuration.

Moi aussi!

...now that is truly evil...

...why didn't I think of that?

Well thanks again for all the input.

I have decided to nuke the site from orbit.

We play once a month and it was the mage who as complaining from the get go that 2-7 karma a month would be too darn slow.

I agreed to up the karma by a factor of 3, which 8 months later here I stand.

We will just start over, and give everyone 32 karma to build from.

I plan on house ruling that Quickening can't be taken, since it was a big part of the problem.

Heh. What you need are LoneStar drones. The trick is to not attack him the first time. He's flying away from his house and sees a LS aerial drone but the drone keeps going. There's another drone somewhere later that week that gets pretty close but takes no action.

The drones have flagged him as a "magical threat" since anything that's flying silently and not on the visible spectrum should scream 'mage.' Given the spell auras the 'Star mage(s) eventually see (drone spotters, you know) they know how many spells he has up and what force they are.

If you want to give him warning, let his contacts start making noise about a possible vampire in the area.

Net result he should find himself under simultaneous attack by "Mage SWAT" drones, spirits, and casters, probably at his safe house.

Wouldn´t the mana spells continue to work? Not that I am a proponent of Quickening.

Personally, I'm a big fan of Quickening. You just have to know how to counter it.
Really, not much is stopping him from pulling the same trick with sustaining foci, supposing he spends his money on them.

Haha nice.

Great idea's everyone.

But rather then blowing this into a "The GM doesn't want you to do it so I shall beat you", like I said... I will just fix the root of the problem.

(Less Karma to make Quickening less attactive and NO Quickening so the addict wont be tempted a year from now)

Even better would be to simply talk with him and agree to a compromise. You already lost when you started the arms-race with your fellow player and tried to up him with your own better and mightier NPCs, where he feels that to seriously be able to compete and have his character survive, he has to maximize as much as possible.

Seriously, even lessening Karma awards and putting away one rule forcibly won't help that much.

You should play at a level that everybody agrees and is comfortable with.