Hi there DS. I figured after trying my hand at finally GMing a game of Sr4, I came across a few ideas that I had question on how to make it work within the rules of general acceptance within the SR community.

The jist of it is that a corp makes an item equivalent to a battery to house mana in a gelatinous form, and use it as an alternative power source for weapons akin to the power packs for a laser. (Fluff wise, a strain of Fab3 and GlowMoss blended and infused by a Magician casting spells into the said primordial form to give it, in a sense, a magical charge.) With it, they make an item called a Channeler (read: wand) to have a mundane be able to use spells to a lesser degree of mages. The way I have it worked out so far would be the batteries have X charges (1-30) and the spell's drain uses the charges in the battery. The problem I have, as the GM, figuring how to make it work, be effective yet not game breaking.

So, we have a Powebolt spell, [Drain= (Force/2)+1] in the hands of your average street samurai who thinks of his pistol shaped Channeler as simply a fancy gun. How would you guys say it would work for him pulling the trigger? Does it just fire off in the direction pointed until a certain distance (drain x 10m?) using the Exotic Ranged skill? And if so, what happens if it hits the intended target? How would some one Counter Spell it, or can they? What if they glitch on the roll to fire? Does it explode or just drain the charges like it had shot?

I've been pouring over these ideas, and only come up with a few answers. Since the weapon would be casting a spell, it would take hits with Spellcasting skill, not the weapon skill. I figure if the target's opposed roll like any other firearm, but the extra hits do nothing to increase damage after the hit, since there would be no armor to aid in the resistance I figured it would help to make sure it did not become to unbalanced.

Then we run into the idea of how many charges the shot takes. Using the Powerbolt (formula mentioned above) the minimum charges used would at least be 2 (ranging the damage from 1-3P). Following the models for similar classes of weapons (Heavy Pistols, Sporting Rifles, Heavy Weapons ect), you come to a generalization on damages of 5-6P on pistols, 7-8 on rifles, and 9+ on heavier weapons. So following the formula for Powerbolt, and using the limited numbers of charges in the batteries, the damage curve begins to build up. (Even if changing it to something like lightning bolt, an indirect spell and having them roll to hit with that instead still proves to the same point for the idea.)

The trouble is, following that method, something along the lines of an artillery cannon (like a battleship's main cannon) using up a full 30 charge battery, would end up being 55P, switching to Powerball (Drain=(Force/2)+3) for the idea of artillery. (30 Drain = (Force 55 /2, round down) +3). Knowing the group I have to GM for, putting anything with the potential of that kind of power in the same realm thought. While it could begin a whole new working of thoughts for mana based technology, I wouldn't dare let the players start with that. Whats to stop them, or in retaliation the in game corps, from weaponizing into faster firing weapons of spell destruction?

The trouble is, I know they would enjoy the run, and beg for more (which, that is the idea, right?) just with the images of things happening before them. What do you guys suggest?

Thanks in advance!
D56.


(PS. Yes; I did get the mana battery and weapon idea from Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. I figured they wouldn't remember it well enough to have the idea come from there.)

The anime series Outlaw Star had special pistols that fired 'caster bullets' - basically the same thing you're outlining (more info).

Personally, I wouldn't like to play with items like this. I feel they make magic less special (which is not such a big deal), as well as diminish the importance of character specializations and cooperation (big deal). What's the need for a real mage if every street samurai has a zapper gizmo at hand? This is especially the case if these things can sustain spells. If you only want combat spell guns, you could quite easily just make up stats for guns that fire chemical freeze-bullets or some weird brain-EMP (or sonic?) gun for direct stun damage.

That being said, if you limit the power of these things enough not to make the PC spell-casters feel cheated (Why does everyone have spells and I'm the only one with no cyber?), it might not be game-breaking. I'd suggest you capping the force of the saved spells to something relatively low, like maybe three. You also didn't mention it, but I trust the people firing these things have to resist drain themselves.

Anyways, I hope you can live out your ideas and make everyone in your group happy

Since Outlaw Star was mentioned...

the caster shells were not easy to come by, so it stands to reason that will stay true in SR4 as well. Now, several low level shells were used without major drawbacks, so if it's a low grade (maybe force 1-3), it might become a new fashion statement for the gun fanatics. The really powerful shells, however, would clearly be of much higher force (thus taking more time, resources, probably karma, etc, to make).

Let's not forget using the most powerful shells, there was a visible backlash. That would lead me to think there was still a drain code on caster shells anyways, the lower levels just weren't as obvious (low drain).

Of course if you're using some sort of battery for it, that changes it a bit. That part reminds me of the absorption metamagic from SM. Maybe that design can help you out too - reduce the drain of a spell fired, rather than serving as a charge?

What you want is the Anchoring metamagic. It allows a magician to store a spell in an object for later use. Such spells can be activated by a variety of conditions, the most complex involving the use of detection spells attached to the anchor and the simplest being touch or impact.

One can, for example, anchor a bullet barrier along with a detect bullet spell to a worn item such that the barrier activates when it detects a bullet or one could put a spell on a bullet designed to go off on impact and target whatever it hits.
Note that drain is taken by the magician when the anchor is made, so it can be useful for storing powerful spells for later use even if they aren't sold to mundanes. The only problem is that anchors cost karma and this adds up.

In your technology, it sounds more like the battery is casting the spell, so that should provide a mechanism to limit their power. Standard consumer-grade channellers would have a governor to keep you from overcasting and killing the mana battery, but your rigger could probably modify them to let you overcast. You can scale the power to the size of the battery: that main cannon might need a room-sized battery.

I don't think combat spell are really the best use of this, other than allowing you to make the Ghostbusters (mundanes with mana-firing weapons). Even the party mage wants a battery to cast and sustain improved invisibility, so you might want to price these over the cost of a sustaining focus, since anyone can get them to work.

You need a recharge mechanism for the batteries. Really, they should recover slowly over time, because they're healing damage. Batteries used to overcast should heal very slowly, because the battery took physical damage. Maybe mages could get a "Recharge" spell so that they're still useful. Mages could use batteries to expand the spells available to them by spending nuyen instead of karma, but up the drain code to make it less draining to cast a spell than to recharge the battery for that spell. I could see a mage picking up a bunch of batteries for specialized detection spells, for example. In the book The Iron Council, a mage manually charges a thaumaturgic battery array to be have it cast and sustain a spell.

As for making magic less special, this really allows a mage to spread out the magic to the rest of the team, the same way a technical character should be upgrading everyone's commlinks and the hacker should be providing AR support for the whole team. Everyone can benefit from something the mage can do, and the mage is more likely to help others if it doesn't mean sitting in the van for the run because the drain and sustain penalties cancel out his dice pool. If the dice pool for battery-powered spells is something like (Battery Magic or User Magic) + (Battery Spellcasting or User Spellcasting), then the mage probably has an advantage over any other user.

If you're adding a magepunk dynamic but mages are feeling left out from the cyber side, then maybe you'd house rule in something like a cyber focus to give mages very expensive cyber or have user essence limit the output of batteries to keep other characters from taking cyber. Maybe users are treated as having Gremlins at rating 5-Essence for using the batteries?

Wow! Very great replies! I hadn't thought of Outlaw Star when thinking this up, thought the ideas help!

Anchoring Metamagic: That helps a lot into making it work within the rules, and bend rule of the limited numbers of Anchors (assuming they are using a bound spirit or the ilk to produce the anchors; which was also an idea I was playing with to have it resist drain when the channeler is used) and it could work.

Batteries make the test against drain (which, unless I missed the part where Awakened objects have a Willpower value, it fails) and once the battery is used up, the runner would have to buy mana battery. In theory, it would be plausible to have non-combat spells that would run off a battery and a sustaining foci to have Detection, Illusion, or other sustained spells running all the time, and just stick them in a messenger bag or a shachel at the runner's side. While this isn't designed to make magic less special as a player standpoint, it would in character standpoint. In the world where they eliminate the need for a mages (except for within the corps and producing new gizmos) no one would be able stand in the way of many incorporable spirits and the already powerful mages masters of their world. (Which helps because the corp behind the creation of the batteries is being run by a creative Shedim Master)

Alright, so having each channeler have a built in governor makes sense, both in and out of game, because the corp would WANT you to buy the bigger Channeler and out of game for the GM's peace of mind. The Recharge spell would be something the corp would create and have a 'recycling' program and keep the spell formluae under lock and key.

Thank you very much, DS. You've helped to make this campaign far easier to build.

I wouldn't allow it at all. If it doesn't offend too many of the rules/background stuff to exist, then it would still likely be very expensive and rare. If a player (or a GM for that matter) wanted a sammy with this kind of thing, I'd just recommend they have a mage instead. It's like making a spell that can hack or something, I just don't see the point of the crossover, and I feel it offends the setting. In Arsenal they make it quite clear that the megas are working their asses off to try and find a way to make magic more usable in every day security, if something like this were possible I think it would have gotten at least a mention.


Anchoring is meant to give a mage character a few more personal tricks, not as a way to outfit your street sammies with spell slinging wands. Everything has big downsides, because it requires karma to create anchors, using spirits would probably be a bad plan, as the karma would have to be forced out of them. Personally I'm big on the whole "Spirits getting tired of being abused and going crazy" thing, not to mention that several traditions would just refuse to do it. I think it would be much more rare and difficult that what you are suggesting, and anyone who could afford to do it, could probably also afford to just hire a mage and get more spells in the deal.

I have just recently got into SR4 living here in Venezuela but I'd guess if the corps are working hard they will found out nothing... the way magic is seen in SR universe is very unique and you always need the magic-gene to work with it. Otherwise why would it cost point in the character creation stage?

Totally agree with hound here specially on the spirit get abused. I'd always played mages in SR and had a respect and played with respect about spirit and its services. I personally believe spirit do exist and we can request their help.