I've been reading here and in the shadowrun core rulebook (v3) for about three days now, and i'm very impressed with the game system. But I have some (probably stupid) questions.

1.
This one came up when I was GM'ing an improvised campaign yesterday. The party had a mage (street mage copied directly from the book). The 2 non-mage party members triggered the alarm and the mage decided she wanted to take out the 3 guards patrolling the apartment hallway. She is a hermetic mage, so does that mean she has to draw out a casting circle to cast mana bolt? This looks like it would make her a lot less powerful than the 2 gunslingers.

2.
I've seen examples in the book and here (idiot's guide to the Matrix thread) where characters roll more than 6. How is this possible on a six-sider? Example follows:

I don't really know about number 1, but for number 2, theres a thing called the Rule of Six. It doesn't apply to all rolls, but it applies to most.

The Rule of Six is that, if you roll a six on a die, you get to roll again, adding the result. So rolling a 6 and a 2 would have a result of 8, which is how you beat TNs of 7.

1> As far as casting spells goes, the character basically has to just want it cast, and it happens. Drawing a circle is done only for more involved tasks, and the only one brought up in the base book is actually summoning an elemental. (Not calling one that's already been summoned to you, keep in mind.) Most magical actions are pretty easy to pull off in the moment of a shadowrun, though.

2> As said before, any time you roll a 6 on your D6, you get to roll it again and add to your previous number. So if you roll a 6, you re-roll and take whatever that roll is plus six, if you get another six you re-roll and add twelve, etc.

Thanks for the replies everyone! :yay:

In general, if you see a dieroll in the format #d6 (in canon books only, as gamers themselves use all sorts of notation), the rule-of-6 does not apply. Otherwise it's pretty much everything.

~J