Does it matter? Thickness of IRL buidlings is bumpkiss. All that matters is if the rules work as intended.

Explaining thickness, materials and IRL is orthogonal.

Figure out what damage code flechettes do to objects.

All of the rules:


If you want your wall double thick, then the grenade blows a 1/2 meter hole through the whole thing.

Or we can do math.

24P damage against a (second) barrier also 0m away (10cm != 1 meter by any stretch of the imagination), but receives the first barrier's armor as a bonus.

24P vs. 46 armor ( (12 + 5) * 2 + 12)

46 dice average to 15 successes.

24 - 15 = 9
Not penetrated, but nearly.

If the GM doesn't feel like rolling 80 dice on this (the first barrier plus the second) then he'd opt for 1:4.

24 - (34/4) = 16 [blast continues through]
24 - (46/4) = 11 [blast continues through]
24 - (58/4) = 10 [blast is stopped, barely, wall has 1 box of health left]*

*If we wish to treat partial damage as smaller holes, then there's a good 90% of that 3rd thickness missing, so it looks like swiss cheese, only more swiss and less cheese.

No, not really. All that matters is the rules work as written. Intent is for the writers to decide.

Thickness, materials and IRL simply means the rules are realistic enough for me.

Where does it say counterspelling can't be used on objects, anyway?

No willpower stat = no resistance test, yes...in the exact same way that 0 dice = no test.
0 dice + x dice does give a test though - see the longshot rules.
Therefore counterspelling for an object should give a resistance test equal to the counterspelling used.
Ergo, 4 sucesses likely aren't sufficient to de-equip runners with a compentant mage on their side.

The use of the word Character in the rules.

"A protected character must also stay within the magician’s line of sight in order for Counterspelling to be used. Note that a magician can always use Counterspelling to defend herself, unless surprised.

When a protected character is targeted with a spell, she rolls Counterspelling dice in addition to the appropriate attribute (Body or Willpower) for the resistance test. Hits generated on this test reduce the net hits of the spell’s caster as with any Opposed Test. If multiple protected characters are targeted by the same spell, the Counterspelling dice are rolled only once and each target is protected equally."

except that walls are still objects (just like they were a few posts back when someone already mentioned this) and therefore anything that doesn't have a DV higher than their armor deals stun damage, which is the same as saying it does no damage because stun damage doesn't do anything to objects.

Armor to compare against is 12. You double it when rolling to resist. Damage is "physical." At least for the first 10cm.

Given that it's been blown to smithereens, I'd say that the bonus armor the second layer gets is the equivalent of reducing the force of the explosion, and not actually additional armor to compare against.

And even if it was, we've still determined that a single frag grenade vs. a 10cm thick wall wins and is highly unrealistic.

So, if you look at the rules real screwed like and do the math wrong(ish), explosives make no sense. I see. Very interesting.

No, you have not. As I have stated previously, 1 frag against brick wall is not unrealistic IMO.

It is 1 frag against a 1m x 1m 10cm thick brick wall. Those "martial arts" guys breaking bricks? Those are the same bricks in your wall.

Or a plascrete wall. Or a security door, or armored glass....

You'd think that bullet proof glass would, you know, be bullet proof.

I'm perfectly happy with "bulletproof" glass that stops some bullets (any doing 8DV or less) and slowing down any round that does more than that (by adding 8 armor to the target for damage resistance tests). I certainly don't expect "bulletproof" to mean that it'll stop anything that you decide to throw at it. This is Shadowrun, not Star Trek.

Saw that...however...

That's not the same as eliminating the possibility of placing counterspelling on an object, it's just a statement explaining the near-universal use of it.
To clarifiy: saying 16-year-old boys can take their driver's license test does not mean that 16-year-old girls can't...or 30-year-old men and women for that matter.

(Frankly, if a magician can't defend an object, I can't see any mage or VIP-with-enemies ever voluntarily getting into a vehicle of any sort - riggers can't dodge wreck helicopter.)

And how many successes do you need to damage the copter?

Likely more than 4, given its size and complexity.

Which means cars and copters are only at risk from dragons, which could just sit on them anyway.

I'm not saying this is a good idea, I'm saying this is what the rules say. The same rules that say that wards do nothing to protect inanimate objects because wards ADD to to a test that inanimate objects expressly don't get to make. So you powerball the ward and the ward collapses due the ward anchor being turned to dust.

In my NSHO I think wards should strip hits from spells, but that is totally not RAW.

Most PC magicians in SR can throw at least 12 dice. Many can throw more than 15 with focuses and initiation. Poof goes the helo.

15 dice on average is only 5 successes and 1 die shy of buying 4. Helis are more than structure rating 5 IMO.

Structure Rating 5 has nothing to do with it. As long as the spell overcomes the OR, the heli takes the damage. Furthermore, the highest RAW OR is 4+. If the GM so decides it is more than 4, it has got to be more complex than the example given for OR 4. Since the maximum OR can vary from GM to GM, it is easier to debate the issue if we generally accept 4 to be the highest RAW OR.

Use edge to reroll and the heli goes down.

mmm looking at the numbers, he said force 6. for my current mage he would have to overcast that..mmm na so many other fun spells that can cause so many fun effects,

And for every mage never forget bodyarmor, bodyarmor bodyarmor.

Yes standing behind the troll counts as body armor, (note: not as effective if you are the troll))

Speaking of Body Armor, how many structure boxes do you think it has? Does a Powerball kill everybody's Armor Jackets? Force 6 with a totem bonus and spellcasting focus, lets say 16 dice. Average 4 successes... threshold for armor is probably 2. Pre-edge average is 8 boxes of damage to armor. Again, counterspelling can't work because it adds to the resistance test, which objects do not get.

Powerball drain is significantly less than any indirect elemental spell, and those would need something like 8 successes to have the same effect.

Couple of things.

First Barriers shrugging off attacks that do not have a DV exceeding their Armour Rating applies only to 'Shooting through Barriers' not to 'Destroying Barriers.' Different rules.

Second the example is quite clear, attacks that do not exceed the objects Structure Rating do not penetrate it at all.

Thirdly, a Barrier's Structure Rating is derived by multiplying the Structure Rating of the Material in question from the Barrier Rating table by it's thickness in increments of 10 cm.

A reinforced concrete floor 3ocm (about a foot) thick has a Structure Rating of 45 and an Armour Rating of 24.

A frag grenade resting on such a floor has a DV of 12. It is not attached by any reasonable standard. I would insist on some sort of tamping or a shaped charge at a minimum to get this effect.

The floor rolls its Armour Rating (24) x 2: 48 Dice against a DV of 12. The BBB recommends buying hits for this, resulting in, uhh, oh, no damage...

Even if you tamped the grenade it would only suffer 6 boxes if damage and you would have created a divot approximately 40cm across and 4cm deep.

Sorry, meant Object Resistance.

And once again, the rules do not state that counterspelling cannot affect an inanimate object. In fact, they never mention the two together.

Basically, there is no RAW on the subject - yes AND no are both functionally houserulings. At least until a FAQ or other official clarification takes place.

I could just as easily point out the section on astral barriers and wards:

Hmm...no reference to character there. And 0 dice + (force) dice = (force) dice.

Wards are basically fire-and-forget counterspelling for an area, so the two should work exactly the same way...whichever way it gets ruled in your game.

No Resistance Test is quite a bit different from 0 dice Resistance Test; 0 dice means you have no chance of success, while no test means you cannot make the test at all, regardless of what your Dice Pool would be. Objects do not receive a Resistance Test. Anything that adds to a Resistance Test (Counterspelling) thus has no effect, as no test is made.

I would rule against this, but by RAW, Counterspelling does nothing to protect objects.

Objects do not recieve a resistance test.

Why do you suppose that is?

Oh, right: objects have neither a body* nor a willpower stat which is what is used in a resistance test.

No stat is identical to no test.

However, no stat + a bonus is simply the bonus.


*yeah, yeah, I know - I was thinking more about the nuke-the-ward-focus argument, not the nuke-the-car argument when I typed this.

Not to shoot you down since you’re on my side of this conversation but objects do have a body stat. well some of them do. Vehicles namely.
And, I do understand that objects do not get a resistance test to spells. Their OR is their resistance test. They, in a way, don't get a test because by their very nature they resist the effects of magic upon them.
Let me ask you a question Muspellsheimr. In your game, when a mage casts a powerball (or its variants) at a living target does your GM (or you, if you are the GM) say that even if the target resists the spell all of his gear, armor, vehicles he is on get destroyed? If so, Why?
Under counterspelling in the BBB it talks about mages "JAMMING" mana in the area therefore making it harder for an enemy mage to cast in the area. (Sounds like a specialized background count though I doubt that’s what it is supposed to be)

If we all agree the rules suck this debate gets easier....

The rules don't suck. They are just incomplete. One sentence at the end of counterspelling stating "Counterspelling can be used to protect objects in line of sight of the mage." would be sufficient to alleviate this issue.

But the line isn't there.

So they do suck, because they are incomplete.


Personally, this is the same issue I've seen in AD&D and it caused much hilarity years ago.
No-one enforces the items gets damaged rules because virtually everything would get ruined very quickly.

For SR, I'd just give everything a threshold [based on material, etc], and if enough successes are generated have it be affected.

But it's just the same for players gear when they get attacked, and the game devolves in spending all the game having gear break and be replaced - not what I want to do.

If you want to do this level of number crunching, then it must also apply for damage from bullets, knives, batons, falls, fire, etc - they all damage their target.

Mikado yeah, I caught that. Note the *note in my post (apparently from after you initially hit reply.)

one little funny thing about ballistic glass (i dont thing even the companies making the real deal call them bulletproof) is that a long burst will potentially blow a hole in it.

DV 2 pr bullet, so its 6x2 or DV 12. against that there is armor 4x2 and structure 5.

so thats about a 2x2 meter hole in that window...

so yes, it could potentially stop individual bullets, or even indivdual fragments from the blast, but the sheer shockwave will get to to break.

even mythbusters allow for failure points in their rigs so that they can channel the blast, anything else and it will just find the path of least resistance (usually a door or similar) on its own...

I'll acknowledge that glass has that kind of structural weakness (it is all of a cm or two thick, and is glass), but concrete and bricks?

Has anyone consider the spell "neutron bomb" a mana based damage spell that would only effect living targets in the blast radius. Kills the targets, leaves their stuff intact.

BTW, when dealing with magicians, play the odds. Drop a smake grenade and use thermographics to target the magicians.

As an aside: how many Condition Monitor boxes do standard items have?

Manaball. It already exists.

You always have a Defense Dice Pool to dodge an attack with. In some circumstances, this is reduced to 0, and no success is possible (excepting Long Shot). In others, you simply are not allowed to use it (surprise).

Some objects, as you said, have a Body. They do have a Resistance pool to resist a Powerball with - they simply are not allowed to use it.

Counterspelling adds to the Resistance test - something that non-living/non-mana targets, regardless of their pool, are not allowed to make.

RAW, Counterspelling does absolutely nothing to protect such targets.

i would say so yes.

thing is that concrete is good as being compressed, but stinks at being beaten about. and ones cracks starts to form, its bye bye unless its reinforced...

note however that the default stats in SR4 is given in a 1mx1mx10cm ratio. a 10cm wall of concrete, un-reinforced, someone could take down with a sledge imo. and then it would only be the reinforcing that would keep it up (tho it would have some very nasty cracks and exposed reinforcements).

as for brick, its most likely clay bricks.

and clay seems to be natures equivalent to concrete...

the thing about using concrete in defenses is as much about angled surfaces as anything else. just like how a tanks armor is angled to increased its "head on" thickness...

SR rules do not go there as they are aimed at office buildings and similar, not bunkers and other serious military installations...

You want to pit your Helicopter against my Orc Druid's 4 Force 10, 10 Casting Dice Power Bolts in one round from invisibility? I guarantee you that helicopter is toast in three seconds unless someone can counterspell me.

I've played with those rules quite a lot, actually, and you'd be amazed at how quickly the PCs jumped on Shiftweave when it became available with MIC.
I actually apply the same rules in Shadowrun as I do in DnD. Your items aren't damaged unless you roll a 1 on the save, or in SR4s case a critical glitch on the resistance test. Unless someone is trying to specifically blow something up, or the grenade lands right at their feet, weapons tend to survive. Guns and 'attended objects' of the sort are allowed a mages counterspelling, even of the living targets he guards, because of the linked/sympathetic nature of possession. 'This is my gun' allows full transfer of counterspelling dice, making magical sabotage of equipment extremely difficult.

there's quite abut in Earthdawn about length of ownership and nature of bonding with personal items, making them more usable and more suseptible the more personal they are.

You're right, tracking damage seperately for but of gear is not the best way. Maybe some of dice in an effect can be deaignated item affecting and damage them if they roll a 1.

Overall though, I think people destroying items willy-holy because nothing in the rules says they can't are actually abusing the system.

On that logic, the GM is ok to rain meteors on a character and his belongings because the rules don't say the GM can't.
There are rules and there is a spirit to the rules - breaking 1 is annoying, breaking the other ruins the game.

Seriously, just tell the player if they want to do the "Destroy all equipment" thing, the NPCs will start doing it to. If he still wants to, put it to a vote and tell the players that you will be applying it to everything evenly from now on.

Once the mundanes realise they are looking at multi-thousand (or multi-hundred thousand) losses in gear, they will beat the mage to a bloody pulp themselves. And if they do not, then make sure that you evenly apply the damage to PC items, maybe blowing up something really valuable in the first game. The annoying Mage who thought up the ideas really expensive Focus is a good place to start.

SR is a game played to have fun. Doing something like this which totally removes the challenge also totally removes the fun. There fore, see the second part of the Golden Rule.

There is one angle I don't think people have explored: we haven't been factoring in the fixedness of a target. It should seriously matter to the amount of damage done to a target whether it is securely fixed in place or not. This factor is modified by the hardness of the target itself. Let me explain.

If something is anchored in place, then it is less likely to be knocked over, but more likely to suffer the effects of a blow from a physical or magical force. Think of the extreme example with which they like to impress school children: the yardstick held in place by a sheet of newspaper. You can actually break the yardstick while leaving the paper intact. Now imagine something like a firearm that is jammed in a crack in the wall, and then the protruding part is hit with a crowbar. The likelihood of damage to the weapon is higher than if the weapon were just sitting free, say swinging on a rope. If the weapon is free to move with the blow, it is less likely to be damaged. One could argue that all the weapons and other items that are being carried by a character are similarly freer to move than if they were anchored. So they should be free to be dislodged, pushed back, whatever, and be less likely to be damaged by the blast from a spell.

Compared to things like brick walls and metal weapons, people are fairly squishy. A shock wave from a Powerball or other spell (whether this shock comes from the outside or the inside) hitting a squishy human would compress soft tissue before the tissue has a chance to overcome its inertia and start to move backwards/away. So even a freestanding human is seriously damaged by a shockwave. Flesh is more vulnerable to damage than steel, even if it is freestanding. Objects sitting on a person, or loosely attached to him, should be free to move and pushed/blown/torn off the person.

So, in the case of a spell such as a Powerball hitting an area, yes, all items such as weapons should be affected, but their fixedness should determine how they are affected. A 'soft' person would be squished. A 'hard' pistol would be torn away from him, but not necessarily broken in the process.

It occurs to me that their might be a difference between "seeing" and "Perceiving" a target. With an area of effect mana spell if you don't notice something it's not effected. So what do you notice in the three seconds? Probably not much. You see the major targets but your brain probably filters out most of the surroundings (you notice 4 goons, and one drone, your brain does not have time to register for spellcasting purposes the desk in front of them, the copy of The Lord of the Rings poking out of one goons pocket, the baseball cap that they're wearing, their clothing, ectra). A good house rule might be that a non elemental damage spell can only effect say spellcasting scores worth of non living targets. If you want to do damage to the surroundings fireball and ball lighting are your best bets.

Not to muddy the waters, but since Powerball doesn't have an elemental effect of Blast, does it actually produce a force of some kind? I've always seen the Powerbolt/-ball spell as akin to the old-school Disintegrate spell from AD&D. Things just go poof, but they don't get blasted all over the place.

That's actually a really good point, especially if the caster hasn't taken an Observe in Detail action before casting.

thing is that powerball is not a external force, its supposedly damaging the target apart from inside (therefor no armor dice on the damage save).

now, if we where talking some kind of indirect spell, it would be another matter...

This a good point. To direct the energy, the caster must actually select all the targets. This is how direct spells differ from indirect spells. This is a good point! The question arises, then, how many targets can a magician select. Wasn't there something in earlier editions of SR that limited the number of targets?



Yeah, that occurred to me as I was submitting the squishy vs. hard post. But the magical energy has to come from somewhere, even if it is inside the target. Is it reasonable to assume that magical energy is directed into all parts of the target evenly, at the same time? How would a magician be able to see all those parts equally? I'm thinking both of perspective and internal vs. surface. If the spell is constrained by what the spellcaster can see, then the energy will have a vector component of some sort.

If the spell were able to affect things/parts the magician can't see, then:

a) the air itself in the area of effect should be destroyed, followed immediately by a thunderclap and a vacuum that would suck in everything around it.

b) we are into the realm of indirect spells, which can affect things the magician cannot see.

Nope, I just cast Manaball instead. Since it's, y'know, a real spell.

But it sounds so much cooler if you call it Neutron Bomb!!!

Man it sounds like demolitions skill isn't used anymore ...lmao