Powerball didn't get that much use in previous editions of shadowrun, because you had to match what was usually a very high target number, in order to mess people up. That has changed! In this post, I will tell all you mages how to absolutely cripple the enemy, with a single powerball. Your teammates will love you, and your GM will kill himself!

Here's the method:

1- look at your enemy. Try to see as much of them as possible.

2- cast a level 6 Powerball.

3- When the GM is determining available targets, inform him that a powerball will target not just the people in the radius, but, their weapons, their gear, and their cyberware.

4- make your roll. You will need 4 gross successes for this to be absolutely effective, so make sure your character is set up to reliably get 4 successes on the powerball.

5- your GM will make the appropriate Damage resistance tests. While the metahumans you targeted might resist taking damage from the spell, it won't matter. None of the Guns, electronics, or visible cyberware gets a resistance test, and counterspelling cannot be used to protect them. Gun-sized gear or smaller is not likely to have more than 6 boxes of structure, so if you get 4 successes, you will destroy all visible guns, armor, comlinks, cyberware and gear, automatically. If you're lucky, the actual enemies will take a little damage, too, but that is just icing on the cake.

Ok mages, now you know! Now, go out and win Shadowrun!

I am reminded of that old saying, "What is good for the goose, ..."

Once implanted, cyberware becomes part of the person so you can't target it separately from the rest of the body, it's a good tactic thought, the downside is that it destroyes possible loot.

Step 4 is not as easy as you might think.

Step 1 could also be an adventure unto itself after the GM has encountered this trick once.

As long as your GM is being thorough enough to allow this, he should also be having grenades and such damage gear. So the powerball is effective, but doesn't do anything that mundanes cant do.

I wonder why no one has thought of this before.

Maybe most of us remember earlier versions of SR where the number of targets was limited?

I had already thought of it. Didn't you guys notice that the Ram/Wreck/Demolish line of spells are for all intents and purposes limited versions of the Power line of spells? It even outright calls them variants. That said, I've never really allowed it since it steps too heavily on the toes of elemental spells for my tastes, particularly since the devs seem to take special care to point out that it is those spells that affect virtually everything in the area to some extent as opposed to the Power spells which are fluff wise a direct channeling of energy into targets. I just kinda figured it was against the spirit of the rules if not the RAW to handle it that way.

So, what does this mean? Is there a destructive all-encompassing spell-from-hell out there?

Lightning Ball. Few, if any, electronics (cyber?) have Electrical resistance built in. That was one of the main reasons why we stuck with 3rd edition for a while (I couldn't give my drones electrical resistance and a single low force electric ball knocked ALL of them out, if not nearly destroyed them entirely).

I only deal with the 'cinematic' destruction of objects with powerball. I.E. important stuff, guns, cans of gasoline, baskets of kittens.

I also do the same with the effect of grenades on equipment. Remember, if you're gonna powerball the fuck out of your enemies, remember that you SHOULD be doing the same with grenades. And that includes the effects on stuff like the floor, and walls.

I can't count the number of times Player Characters have lobbed grenades into a room, then run in after they go off, and wonder why the floor won't support their weight and the walls won't support the weight of a roof.

It's like they forget what the grenade actually did.

Hilarious fun for me, tho !!

I can foresee a great deal of naked enemies around mages, as well as structural damage to all the building and so forth that happen to be visible to anyone casting these spells...

Actually, I already thought of a pacifist mage with a powerball limited to non-living targets.

I'd quote various bits on the aura extending beyond armour and allow it to incorporate anything that doesn't extend massively out from the body. You can't target their commlink independantly. You can target the weapon in their hands.

If you can see it and they did not pay Essence for it, you can target it. Auras are not Anti-Magic Force Fields.

It's area effect. You don't target it, it just dies.

The BBB is pretty clear that area effect spells target "areas or points in space" at "the center of the area affected". How exactly did you figure that you can specifically target all the non-living things without harming the people in the AoE?

My group did the math recently:

1 frag grenade can blow a hole through a plasteel wall.
1 frag grenade sitting under a person's feet as they stand next to a single wall just kills them (chunky salsa rules):
12 base damage + wall at 0m -> damage doubled. 24P +5AP (or Body + ~15 / 3 = 6 to 7 hits -> 17 damage, target is FLRM'd).
Even if the wall is considered to be 0.5m away (1 meter round trip), that's still 22P.

High explosive grenades kill the target, his dog, his neighbor, and the town he grew up in he's is in a 6 foot by 6 foot room with a 6 foot ceiling.

Also: grenades shouldn't deal double damage to objects, Mythbusters has shown us that it takes quite a bit of force to blow apart adhock blast chambers, something like a hand grenade won't do more than pepper it with shrapnel.

Well, FRAG grenades won't. High Explosive grenades, depending on the type, might.

Look at the rules. Explosives deal double damage against objects (such as walls, page 158).

A frag grenade does 12P, so 24P against the wall it's next to. A plasteel wall has 12 armor and 11 structure (page 157).

Barriers get double armor (unless the explosive is actually attached to the wall, in which case normal armor; this is not the case we're observing: a thrown frag grenade).

24P vs. 24 armor

Average hits: 8

24 - 8 = 16

16 damage to 11 boxes, 1 square meter of plascrete wall is blown away by the concussive force of the grenade.

Doesn't even matter where the +2 AP comes in, even pre-doubling (i.e. 4 additional armor) that's a statistical 1 less damage.

Regardless, the list of materials completely penetrated by a frag grenade are as follows:

Glass, drywall, interior doors, tires, trees, furniture, plastiboard, ballistic glass, hardwood, (lightposts, chainlink fence), densiplast, security doors (!!!), armored glass, Kevlar wallboard, plascrete, concrete*, metal beams*.

High explosives will statistically significantly damage (i.e. 3 grenades will do them in) reinforced concrete (2 to 3), and blast doors (3).

*Higher armor and structure, I haven't done the math, but I'd say it's pretty close. Dealing enough damage to these structures to the point of collapse is statistically plausible, though likely less than even odds.

so now what? I'm supposed to let mythbusters tell me that cars dont explode when you shoot them?

No. Logic is supposed to tell you that frag grenades aren't supposed to penetrate 8 inches of concrete to the extent that a whole section of it collapses.

That's... some kind of funky maths I do not understand.

Because I am not a jerk, I will refrain from pointing out how illogical that statement is given your previous unedited post.

I'm not sure I follow this step...

Seriously tho- the rules say you ignore the weapons AP value against barriers.

Sorry, that should be 24 - 8 = 12.

Fixed the post. And it did not need two people correcting me (one of whom was a jerk and pointed it out twice without even noticing the previous line saying that it's 24 damage followed by the line of typo'd math going from base damage to inflicted damage; clearly 24 and 12 are interchangable).

But... but .... 24 - 8 = 16, no?

Clearly, I fails at math.

In which case, at 16 inflicted damage, that means a frag grenade blows through anything but blast bunker doors.

As an addendum, I'm not sure what I was thinking when I did the math. I ended up at 12 and subtracted 8. No idea where I started.

It's also +5 AP from Frag, not +2

If we go with +5 (by the way, my BBB has +2 in it) then the math works as follows:

24 damage, 34 armor (we'll go +5 then doubled)

34/3 ~= 11

24 - 11 = 13

13 > 11

Wall dies.

Bwuh?

You are right. And the rules are stupid. For my games I'd rule that since that unless that the explosve is attached to the baracade, it doesn't deal double damage.

The rules do not jive with what we see in Real Life. It does not mean that the rules are stupid or illogical, it simply means that the rules are not realistic.

Fine by me. Pretty fantastic though.

You mean elvels and dragons and magic aren't real???

Oh damn...there goes my whole world view.

Obviously personal explosives got better in the future, and building materials remain (for the most part) shoddy and cheap. Ta-da. Now it makes (sort of) sense again.

Sounds neat but wait an hour and someone may take this further.
Consider the russian test explosive <link to ru domain> If this is supposed to be the explosives in grenades, why are the bricks of explosives so weak? This is unnrealistic

Ohh wait, I am on Dumpshock. I don't have to make this up, its done in every thread.

Missles do tripple damage (ok, that one might be logical).
But yeah, I'd agree. Strapping an explosive to the wall to take out the wall does double damage and not doubled armor if it's an explosive charge. Frag charges should always be resisted with double armor.

Uhh... don't structures have Hardened Armour, like vehicles? Meaning that the 24P bounces off the 34 armour?

--------------------------

Edit: Huh. Apparently not.

That'd be like trying to shoot through a hardwood board and failing.

Actually, reading the numbers, hardened armor makes sense. Armored glass is 8 (pistol shots should bounce off). But you're right in that the book explicitly declares that it's normal armor.

Here I was thinking that this was a thread about the Powerball spell...

Why do you think that a mage can't Spell Defense an object?
Yes, nothing in the BBB states that you can use counterspelling on an object but nothing prevents it also.
I, for one would love an official answer for this as I frequently drop Wreck Gun spells in AOE of my teammates.

RAW it doesn't help. Just like wards don't help inanimate objects. What does spell defense do? It adds to the Resistance test that inanimate objects don't get to make.

Well, every reference to Spell Defense in SR4, p. 175-176 speaks of protecting a character, so the text leans towards no protection for objects. Possibly this could be because spell defense connects to the aura of the protected individual(s)?

Other than that, why would Counterspelling not work on the flow of mana regardless of the target?

EDIT: On the other hand, kzt makes a telling point about the mechanics. Spell defense adds to a resistance test, and Object Resistance is a threshold modifier, rather than a test on its own. I can't see spell defense adding to a threshold.

I understand that.
I will point out that in the counterspelling section it talks about a mage "actively jamming" the mana in an area. So a mage could (in theory) protect objects in his LOS.
Again, I don't know. I do think it is strange that a mage would get smeared across the pavement when someone powerbolts his motorcycle out from under him as he speeds down the highway at 150kph.

Structures do not have Hardened Armor. Neither do vehicles. What they do have is immunity to Stun damage, which means standard armor, that converts damage to stun, functions as if it was Hardened.


Also, I have not double-checked so I could be wrong, but I am fairly certain double-damage from explosives only takes effect for those you specifically attach to the barrier, such as C4, with the Demolitions skill.

Actually, they do - attacks that don't make the armor don't penetrate. See main book, p. 157, Shooting through Barriers.

Actually after I read up on the Barriers and destroying Barriers rules, I have absolute no problems with a frag grenade destroying 1m x 1m by 10 cm thk brick structure.

Most buildings nowadays IRL have reinforced concrete floors and those are often more than 10cm thick, more likely to be at least 20 cm thick, sometimes 250mm thick. If you want to put up the equivalent of brick as a floor material, then you deserve to get it blown to bits by a frag grenade.

Something else to keep in mind is that frag grenades in the future may be stronger than the ones of current / modern day.

Just a quick thought: I thought frag grenades dealt damage with flechettes, not explosive force. I don't see how the double damage rule applies.