Ok. One of my players came up with a pretty ingenious idea. It works reasonably well when facing opponents without magic support or with weak magic support. ergo: Groups of gangers, light security, etc.

He astrally projects to the area, summons a spirit of man with the optional power of innate spell (StunBall). At a force 5 that is 10dp for casting a F5 stunball. He commands the spirit to manifest and attack the group.

Even if I limit to one casting per service, he simply keeps re-summoning. If the spirit gets blasted, he keeps re-summoning. For the average street gang, this is just devastating. Beyond the obvious of having mages appear everywhere to oppose this (which changes the flavor of the rarity of magic on the street) what other ideas do you have for countering this?

Maybe gangers could be hopped up on initiative increasing drugs, go first, and waste the spirit with stick-n-shock bullets, or even stun batons and shock gloves, before it casts.

Also, instead of being in one clump, they could be dispersed around the area, so one stunbolt won't catch all of them, it will strike a blow against the gang but most of them will be able to fight back or escape.

And gangs like to hang out in some nasty places sometimes. Give their hangout a background count, and that would be a further impediment to spirit nuking.

Oh yea. I spread them way out. He had to keep re-summoning. He did move around to various rooftops though. That continually gave new surprise rolls to him.

I guess my frustration is that spirits come WAY too easy in sr4. In sr3 they were either limited by domain or lengthy summoning rituals...

Ah now thats something I missed in my SR4 studies.

SR3: you couldn't not summon while astrally projecting, Conjuring being an exclusive action.
p.189 SR3 "Astral Conjuring"


I see that SR4 has eradicated exclusive actions. Aside from the p.52 side bar where else does it state that? (coming from SR3 it is tough not to bring rules with you and things not clearly stated will reside...)


Additional question:
In SR3 any spells cast from astral where always physical drain.

Is this the case with SR4? or does astral casting/ summoning follow the same physical rules?

Manifesting won't cut it; the spirit will have to Materialize in order to interact with the physical world. Materialization is a Complex Action. By the time the spirit makes his appearance and is ready to cast the stunball he's already disrupted by the guys who though that it was probably a good idea to take down the spirit that mysteriously Materialized near them.

Bleh, Pwned by Hyz, I'll shush.

The key problem is hardcoded. Be glad that he does not use Acid Wave. (That was one option I failed to tell my mage-playing friend about. His new char is mundane.)

You can easily take away the force 10. The player only gets to choose target and power, the rest is up to the spirit. General attack orders can be interpreted to mean physical attack. Problem: The tactic still works.

For spellcasting on the astral, it's just like on the material except that only mana spells work. They got rid of the whole "always physical drain on the astral" thing. Of course, physical drain isn't exactly unusual in SR4, since you don't have to learn a spell at a particular force. That's a big factor making mages more powerful, both in summoning spirits and casting spells.

I'll have to double-check - I don't have my books with me - but I'm pretty sure drain is always physical on the astral in SR4 too...

If the mage keeps summoning spirits and throwing them to the wolves, so to speak, then the spirits are going to start getting annoyed with him and start using Edge on their Summoning resistance tests. If he keeps at it he might pick up a Spirit Bane quality for "free".

DS

Also remember that a Mage capable of summoning a ( Force 5 ) Spirit without overcasting is pretty fragging rare per the fluff, so he should be able to pull off some bad-assed mojo from time to time, just remember that Spirits have free will and gangers/sec-guards should have a fire first, never ask questions policy towards anything appearing out of thin air.

I dunno... I guess I'm just perfectly fine with gangers or other low grade mook squads with no magic support getting lambasted by a Force 5 Spirit. Not to mention, if you're chain summoning Force 5 Spirits ad nauseum it's pretty likely that they'll take offense and resist with Edge if previous Spirits were getting consistently disrupted upon materialization. Toss in the fact that summoning drain is rather random, which makes it not uncommon for a Force 5 Spirits to threaten 2-6 drain per summoning, making the tactic surprisingly tiring and not good for much other than steamrolling threats the team likely could have easily taken out in a stand up fight anyway. The only problem I really see coming up is that a Force 5 Spirit's hardened armor can be rather hard for Joe Mook to penetrate, which is why you'll often see even my low grade gangers carrying fairly cheap but high powered weapons like the T-250 Defiance or Ruger Super Warhawks equipped with laser sights, and a half dozen such characters blasting away should trash the Spirit's defense pool enough for the last few gangers to have some pretty clear shots even if it's on Full Defense.

Wide Bursts from assault rifles can be handy for that, too, and it's not like it's hard for a ganger to dig up an AK-97 and slap a gas vent onto it.

Yep, anything that leads to more net hits. Besides, you just know that the head honcho in any given small group of gangers is likely to at least have some tooled up SMG like an Ingram Smartgun X or something as a status symbol if nothing else. I mean, hell, if a lot of lowgrade gangers can afford handrazors then it's not unlikely a few of them will have opted for a nicer gun and a shock staff instead.

Throw in a pretty little ganger wench with a high charisma and a Spirit Affinity edge for spirits of man. He won't think its so cool when the spirit turns on him...

The Edge thing is what I've been hanging over my mages head. Use spirits like 9mm shells and you get to start resisting 10P drain ever turn.

I'm surprised this mage is soaking the Drain so easily. The Drain is double the spirit's hits - not net hits, just hits. For a Force: 5 spirit, that will usually be around 4P Drain, and if you use it all the time, you can always get unlucky and have it get 4 hits, making you soak 8P Drain.

I would avoid GM cheese. A spirit affinity and a high Charisma are not the equivalent of banishing, and then controlling a spirit. And I could only see spirits spending Edge if the mage were getting them killed fairly often - having a spirit materialize and stunbolt someone might be abusing game balance, but it is not abusing spirits. That depends on how often they are getting killed - since a Force: 5 spirit is fairly formidable measured against typical gangers, I am guessing it is not happening a lot.

The summoning while astral isn't the problem - the mage could just as easily summon a spirit and have it Search for, then attack, the gangers. The gangers at least have the chance to either hide, or, if it materializes right in front of them, to run while it is doing so.


The real problem (although I don't know all of the details, so I may be assuming some things) is that you are letting him do something potentially dangerous, as well as difficult, while handwaving a lot of it away.

First off, it should not be easy for him to find a bunch of scattered gangers in their home turf, especially since astral perception won't let him see things like gang colors. This is probably the biggest limitation of this tactic.

Secondly, he only has a limited amount of time that he can spend in the astral - keep track of it. And his physical body is helpless - even with friends watching over his meatbod, there are still things like shedim to worry about. Leaving your physical body behind to project your essense to another plane should not be something done casually.

Finally, remember that astral space is not like walking down the block to the 7-11. I'm not saying hit him with "wandering monsters" all the time, but astral place should be a weird and frightening place. There are strange phenomena, background count (which can mess up summoning, although I would give him a good chance to notice it first), and all kinds of astral entities, which might be drawn to areas of high magical activity. They don't even have to be hostile, just curious, but they should serve as a reminder that he is not "safe" from attack - he is in an alien landscape where unkown dangers lurk.

The mage can exterminate random gangers any way he wants. The samurais in my group also have no problems with gangers. Famous last words "this is my turf, sammy".

I think the issue is really with sec guards that have no magical backup. And the key to give guards a chance is to realise that the spirit may avoid overcasting, and interpreting attack orders as melee attack. The result will be much the same, except that the guards can give alert and the rest of the team has a chance to get into combat. With usually around 3 mundanes and one adept also present, giving all action to the mage seems wrong.

Yeah, I agree wholeheartedly with Ryu and Glyph. GM cheese isn't really necessary; I only mentioned the re-summoning and Edge thing to point out that chewing through Spirits like tic-tacs isn't really a very good strategy for use against powerful opponents who can brush off the Spirits fairly quickly, and frankly I'm not really concerned about powerful Spirits beating unprepared or subpar gangers (which they are, frankly, if they don't have any magic support) because that's what they're supposed to do. I mean, honestly, I've seen Samurai routinely beat down small groups in just a pass or two by sneaking up on the gangers and going Rambo on their asses and I have seen a Rigger drive his van into their parked bikes while his the Steel Lynx and Nissan Dobermans ride shotgun and rain bullets on the gangers as they stand their with their pants down. Shadowrunners who pick and choose the site of the confrontation are intended to annihilate gangers in quick skirmishes with a minimum of fuss; it's why they get paid the way they do. It's like lions and hyenas; as a runner you're likely to be a top urban predator-- just don't go wandering into their turf when you're wounded and low on ammo.

Semantics. I used the incorrect term. These are not the droids you are looking for.


I especially like this.


He was starting to accumulate drain.. A box here. A box there. But he could still provide considerable damage first.


Yea. After the first couple, this would have changed the box here/there to some serious drain... Should have pulled this one out.


The gangers surrounded the safe house the team had. They were easy to pick out because they were the ones not running away from the urban battle field.


I agree and disagree here. Background count needs a reason to be there, but I definitely plan to use this more in the future to balance the mage factor. I also like the idea that a stun ball creates a momentary fireworks show in astral space that might attract the curious from some distance away when used one after another. I will read SM 112-122 and incorporate more of that as well.

Thanks to all who provided constructive dialog.

Rating 1 Domains/background counts actually should be surprisingly common, although I do think it's nice to try and always connect even such a low grade background count to minor local landmarks to stay consistent. Churches or even a local stadium for example can easily have a rating 1 background count as well as much of the Seattle docks and large sections of the ork underground due to their association with the Night of Rage. The sooner you start making background counts common but in consistently logical areas, the quicker everyone can adjust.

I don't believe it is sensible to start having spirits use Edge to resist summoning unless the character is actually abusing them. Someone with 5 magic and 5+ in Conjuring is *really good at it* and clearly has sway with the spirits in question. I don't believe it's abusive unless he's throwing the spirits to their deaths repeatedly. Which isn't going to happen unless the player is being a moron. Throwing a ten point quality at them is way out of line.

I think the answer to this is far more subtle. In Shadowrun, displays of power always have consequences. Repeated force 5 summonings and force 10 castings from spirits will attract a *lot* of attention. Maybe there's a high security corp facility two blocks away from the gangers and their on-call security mage has reported astral disturbances. You can do what you want with that as the campaign determines: interrupt the combat with bound elementals, have the mage track down the problem from the signatures, etc etc. Or one of the gangers keeps his head and calls a shaman friend of his while the spirit is materialising.

The gangers will and should get totally and utterly wasted. This is the magical equivalent of a drone with a rocket launcher and should work just as well. The thing is, people *notice* drones with rocket launchers and most players wouldn't attempt it on random opponents because of the response it draws. Magic has been part of the Shadowrun world for over fifty years, and GMs should make sure the world responds to magical flare-ups just as seriously.

Remember that no combat encounter you run happens in isolation. Also remember that it's not about punishing the players for being too powerful, it's about reminding the players how the Shadowrun world responds to powerful things.

I don't see a problem here. If you want to challenge the runners, don't do it with gangers. That's like sending dogs after wolves. Probably weiner dogs, at that.

There is one really easy way to neutralize this mage tactic: have enemies with magical support. They can banish his spirits before they attack, on a 1:1 basis, so everything he does will be instantly shut down. And a mage will provide counterspelling, so that a force 5 stunball will often fail.

I vehemently disagre with using edge, unless the spirits are dying one after the other. Spirits dislike being used as fodder, so that would justify edge. But if they're materializing, using up their services, and going home, they have no reason to be mad. Using spirits as they were intended isn't abusing them.

Another thing: what about astral signatures? It would seem like astral signatures of spells cast by summoned spirits would leave an astral signature traceable back to the summoner right? It doesn't say so explicitly, but it sound reasonable to me... That might be one reason not to use spirit of man nuking as your sole tactic, if you have to skedadle right after killing your enemies you won't have time to erase the signatures.

Couple of points of clarification.
1) I wasn't attempting to challenge the runners with gangers. The gangers were simply retaliating on the team's safe house after an earlier run in where the team 0wn3d the gangers. I also felt that having the gangers get a world class mage would have been a worse example of 'GM Cheese' than some of the examples above.
2) I'm not sure where the over casting came from. I never said that. I said F5 spell with 10dp. Magic(5) + Spell Casting(5) = 10dp
3) The conversation to use edge to resist the summons was for subsequent summonings after a couple of times of abusing the spirits. Not from the get go... ergo after a few of them got wiped out by the gangers.

As to astral signature: Yes, that is definitely a tactic I will be using in the near future. The mage likes throwing F7 and F9 stun balls and stun bolts. Thats a signature that sure lasts a while...

If the gangers are in the open, the spirit doesn't have to materialize near them. He can materialize somewhere convenient, slap concealment on himself and then nuke them from a mile away. The base would be they would need two successes at -8 dice before the environmental mods. So it's kind of unlikely they see him, much less shoot him.

It's a really powerful option. But keep in mind the first time the spirit gets 4 hits and the player gets hit with 8 drain and no spirit it will probably get his attention.

I don't see that it's a problem - as pointed out, gangers aren't much chop.

However, there are drugs that up Willpower(notably Nitro and Kamikaze), giving them a decent chance of disrupting the spirit using attacks of Will (p94 Street Magic) and increasing their chances of surviving the spells.

Besides, a gang of mundane being attacked by spirits is probably going to scatter, so most will survive. And gangers tend to have unsavoury contacts. If they've been selling their victims to the local ghouls, then they can negotiate protection against magical opponents. Or perhaps hire a vampire hitleech who is paid in joygirl essence? Anyway, there should be an organised crime racket taking a cut of the gang's action, and narked at losing income. They'll take steps if the gang is wiped out.

I think my biggest issue is the ease at which summon can summon a spirit (as opposed to sr3), drain not withstanding. I miss the binding requirements for mages and the domain restrictions for shamans..... but I digress.

I think I will have to start making more gregarious use astral signatures. Getting burned once or two by that should fix some of the more 'nuke them from orbit' scenarios...

...but it's the only way to be sure.

One key realisation for any full mage: Summoning is great. It even should be.

If you want less instant-servant summonings, do indeed gimp it by always using edge on behalf of the spirit. Tell the player beforehand that you intent to do so, and that you will reroll failures (adding edge would be too much). He will see drain slightly more often, and maybe adjust to force 4, giving gangers a fighting chance.

The removal of domain restrictions is nice IMO, as is the unified magic system. I would have liked a system where the summoning of a spirit has to be done in an appropiate place - flavourful, and not very limiting if being there in the astral is allowed.

The ability to ADD dice is the biggest hammer in the box. So be careful with it. But I can see it as being appropriate at times. And taking 14 drain in combat will get your attention if more subtle tools have failed.

I like the unified magic, I like it more now that I understand I'm supposed to run with it and spin interesting stories.

I do however miss summons that are appropriate to the area. I've started to house rule that in as flavor text and I might start putting in some game mechanics as well.

I have been considering a rule whereby Spirits always use Edge when resisting being summoned outside of what could normally be considered their Domain.

oooh, merit your suggestion has. Right now I've just been describing the spirits in terms of where they're summoned, warped by the elements of the casters style. if you go to the Yucatan and summon a healing spirit, you're going to get something that roughly looks like a tumi or some other relevant symbol/god.