I'm playing around with an fairly vanilla ninja mystic adept. Magically boosted infiltration, dodge, and heavy weapons. It will also have Magician magic 2 for overcast force 4 spirits of man.

So the question becomes what are the top 2 spells to start this guy with? Improved Reflexes & Analyze device? Silence & Invisibility? Detect (YMMV) + Demolish (gun)

levitation/improved invisibility

Heavy Weapons?

I'd probably go with Invisibilty and a detection spell.

I went heavy weapons because HMG are better than sniper rifles in everything but range where they place a close second. Plus the same skill let's to use an under the 40mm grenade launcher. The only real issue with Heavy weapons is getting them anywhere, but this build is all about the straight up break in. If he's getting searched he's not doing his thing.

Really, same as a 40mm grenade launcher? Interesting. (Can you tell I don't actually own a 4th ed book yet? )

Sounds like you know your concept, though - so I trust you know what's best.

The main drawback of magic 2 is that your best possible roll on an overcast invis spell won't let you fool a drone, as you can't possibly beat its object resistance.

There are a lot of spells for that:

Improved Invisibility / Camouflage
Silence / Stealth
Confusion /Stink or similar spell
Physical Mask

Influence
Levitation


to name just a few.

Heavy Weapons might have some punch, but they are also not very discreet.

Drones typically have an Object Resistance of 4. Object Resistance is a threshold, not automatic resistance hits. In other words, 4 hits overcomes a drone's Object Resistance 4.

Well first off, while it's slower, I would have spirits of man doing the casting. Oversummon a force 4 and have that guy do the spell casting. That's actually where the 2 spell limit comes from. I would only take 1 rank of spell casting.

Levitate is in for sure. It can replace climb, the adept movement powers, and most of gymnastics. Plus it's riff with opportunity for creative use. I'm still not sold on the second pick. Magic detection is generally better than mundane detection but not by tons. Illusions are are really good, but getting one net hit on a OR 4 target as a mystic adept really isn't going to happen. Mind manipulation spells are also really powerful. But are they worth the cost when you have the influence power for free? A lot of the perennial combat spells like power/stun ball/bolt wouldn't have the punch to be worth talking about.

I'm thinking about Fix. It's often over looking by a full mage, and would help a on and off the run. During a run you could use it help cover signs of forced entry and combat. After a run your could help patch up the team's equipment.

I'm also leaning towards demolish (guns) because the OR is a little more doable.

---

About the heavy weapons. What I really like about them is that they scale really well, which allows you to get a lot of millage from focusing really hard on one skill and one weapon. Gas grenade + S&S burst is often a fairly quit 1-shot on an area. That same weapon system can also serve up HE + APDS in short order if the shit hits the fan. Plus you can snipe with it. Max one skill, carry one weapon do it all. Finally, some would say most importantly, I think beefy sci-fi everything-guns are cool.

Shape. Create a new door to walk through anywhere you need one.

Sterilise. No point being stealthy tactically if they can just hunt you down and Ritual Sending you.

So it's a troll with 9 STR? As otherwise I'd like to see a "normal" human carry a HMG and infiltrating anything. I know the SR rules don't really cover the weight of the items and one can shoot with a HMG from hip, but if you think about it, you'd be carrying something like 1,5m long and 30ish kg chunk of steel (50kg with the tripod) along while avoiding being detected. I bet crawling through some small air duct with that is a blast

The idea of having Fix-spell sounds ok for fixing the signs of b&e but to cover the signs of a firefight? HMG rounds do penetrate enough material that you'd have to run the whole floor and one up&down to fix all the bulletholes.

But if realism is not a big issue on such, then the idea sounds cool. Silence would help to suppress the neighborhood waking HMG's song.

Not according to the rules.

"The Magic + Spellcasting test must generate at least one net hit to succeed and may need more if the eff ect has a threshold for success" P173

"The more net hits a character scores (the more hits exceed the threshold), the more the task was pulled off with finesse and flair. So a character who rolls 4 hits on a threshold 2 test has scored 2 net hits." P56

Hence you have ZERO net hits against the drone, and the spell fails.

All valid concerns. The build will have str 3 out of the gate and str 7 pretty quickly. Levitate will help a lot in the interim. Fix and the evidence of a fire fight. I fully understand that 20 .50 cal FMJs are leave evidence of some kind over most of a block. I did feel like you could cover up are small scale encounters. Say you put a gas grenade in guard kiosk. One goes down one fires blindly at you side of the room as they try to run out of the cloud. You drop them with S&S. Fix would let you 'heal' the wall behind you, and the pock mark in the kiosk.

Can you fix the large blood splatters all over the wall though.... If fix fixes the walls per say, what becomes of the bullets? They wouldn't just vanish. The other problem rules wise is that if you have a force four spirit casting fix the most hits they could do to "heal" the wall would be 4. Using a heavy machine gun would probably ding up quite a few walls more then fix might allow. Although fix is not a bad spell for the particular build I would probably suggest something different.

Mush has it right. Drones aren't able to resist spells, so its a threshold test. Now, if a magician was counterspelling a drone (possibly not raw) it'd be easy to stop the spell.

Looking at the table on Object Resistance, drones do not have a fixed OR threshold. The OR of drones is 4+, that is a minimum of 4.

Mana Static and Detect Magic-Extended Range.

Find the wards, damp them entirely, walk through them, and never alert the ward's caster.
Find the enemy mage, damp him, then grenade him.
Reveal invisible enemies by damping them.
1001 uses...

I'm kind of impressed that they use "threshold" at least two ways in the magic rules that are mutually contradictory fashions, one of which contradicts the actual game definition on page 56, plus using "net hits" in two different contradictory ways in the "determine effects" portion of the spell casting rules, one of which contradicts the actual definition of "net hits" in the book on page 56. As you need a net hit per the the rules on a spellcasting success tests (per page 173) for the spell to take effect, why do they claim that the spell works and gets no net hits on the example? If you get no net hits the spell fails. Direct combat spells can't ever do less than force+1 damage, otherwise they have no net hits and fail.

Anyhow, as I both think magic is overpowered and prefer to use rules that are not internally contradictory I'm going to ignore examples that contradict that actual written game mechanics.

I was under the impression that if you smash someones ward with mana static the caster knows the ward is no longer functional (and thus under attack.)

The example is not contradictory. In the case of Opposed Tests (ie. living/magic target), you need 1+ Net Hits for the spell to take effect. In the case of Success Tests (ie. non-living target), you must beat the Object Resistance threshold - which per the rules for thresholds, you must equal or exceed the threshold. If you beat the threshold with 0 Net Hits, any variables of the spell based on Net Hits are 0, but the spell still takes effect - in the case of Direct spells, you deal Force damage. In the case of, say, Bind, if you beat the threshold with no Net Hits, the spell is succeeds, but has no actual effect.

The Clairvoyance spells are IMMENSLY helpful. Especially since you don't seem to be doing a Hacker adept build.

I personally would do Clairvoyance and Levitate. If you are a true ninja you shouldn't need infil boosting spells

Heavy weapons toting ninja?

Personally I think the biggest reason to not use an HMG is the fact that it can't be silenced. If you are doing your thing properly, you shouldn't need the suppressive fire capabilities and a tricked out heavy pistol with S&S or Ex-Ex can do comparable single target damage (presuming no BF/FA)

Spells I would take are Physical Mask and Influence. You can utilize Adept powers for Wall running, climbing, sneaking and everything else. As you advance, adding a few more spells such as detection spells and health spells will help.

That isn't at all what the rule on magic success tests says. Page 173.

"Step 5: Determine Effect
Some spells simply require a Success Test, with hits determining the level of success (as noted in the spell description). The Magic + Spellcasting test must generate at least one net hit to succeed and may need more if the effect has a threshold for success. "

Notice the phrase "net hit". That means you need at least one more hit than the threshold per the definition of "net hit" on page 56.

"The more net hits a character scores (the more hits exceed the threshold), the more the task was pulled off with finesse and flair. So a character who rolls 4 hits on a threshold 2 test has scored 2 net hits."

It's possible that the entire "game concepts" part of the rules is wrong, but I'd tend to assume that rules and examples in the magic section that flatly contradict the actual explanation of the how the game works and what certain terms mean are what wrong.

That is simply a poorly phrased section - notice how "may need more if the effect has a threshold for success" comes after "one net hit". It is basically saying "you need one net hit, or possibly more [u]hits[/i] if it is a Success Test".

It works and its awesome.
I remember playing Fallout Tactics years ago and the most effective guy in my squad was sneaking around in plain old leather armor with a Browning M2 .50 cal HMG.

sneaka sneaka sneaka...
Dakka Dakka Dakka!
Super mutant was critically hit for 736 damage.
Super mutant dances to the rhythm of lead.



What better weapon to sneak around with than one that can take out multiple people during the surprise round?

In fallout you can steal a Bozar (or whatever the name of the HMG was) from a guard and sneak away unnoticed. I wouldn't quite use fallout for such example But as I said earlier, if it's a not realistic campaign, it's one effective idea... but if realism is at all an issue, packing a HMG while sneaking is about the worst idea I'v heard. Ok, a cybertroll in chainmail, HMG and a troll-sized sword along is worse

Gecko Crawl for ninja climbing, Mist for ninja smoke grenades.

I'm tempted to say extended range clairvoyance. Your max range is 80 meters. So that's not as hot as it could be. However.

1. It's just a generally useful spell to have at any point of the game. Even in legwork.

2. It helps with infiltration by being able to see what's going on where you're planning to sneak.

3. You could use it to shoot people though walls. And that's awsome.