Drain has never been a problem. My non-super-specialized mage build that I've been running has thrown dozens of overcast Stunballs over the last year, and I think she's taken physical drain maybe twice from it. Your Drain Resistance pool remains the same regardless of rather or not you're overcasting. Hell, I think she's taken Drain maybe five times over the course of her career. And even if she takes Drain, physical or otherwise, there's always a first-aid kit handy to deal with it.

Overcasting was always the problem we discussed here on Dumpshock, and now it's to be encouraged?

I have seen it thrown around as a random idea once or twice, but noone ever bothered to write it up. To figure out exactly how it worked regarding attribute penalties. Or a variety of other things. Yes, the system is mine.

Um...

I know in my BBB, the cost to raise skills was New Rating x 4 for a regular skill, and new rating x 10 for a skill group. Those got cut in half in the SR4A...it is why it was cheaper to raise Magic from 5 to 6 then to raise Spell casting from 4 to 5. The Karma System as it was previously favoured upping attributes over upping skills.

Here's what my BBB says:

Improvement Karma Cost
New Specialization 2
New Knowledge/Language skill 2
New Active skill 4
New Active skill group 10
Improving a Knowledge/
Language skill by 1 New rating
Improving an Active skill by 1 New rating x 2
Improving an Active skill group by 1 New rating x 5
Improving an attribute by 1 New rating x 3
New positive quality BP Cost x 2
Removing a negative quality BP Bonus x 2
New spell 5
New complex form 2
Improving a complex form by 1 New rating

I'm not sure how up to date it is errata wise. Certainly new newer than a year ago, given how long I've had it.

my 2nd print SR4 says the same...

and there is no karma related changes in the errata, that i can find...

Oh my goodness. The Technomancers didn't even cross my mind. Before they were super specialized hackers, now I think I actually feel bad for them.

(And I did forget the "gain a power point instead of metamagic" optional rule. I guesse we'll be seeing super high initiation levels on Adepts from here on out.)

Start with magic 5 and initiate like 4 times before buying another point of magic. Yeah.

You keep believing that, and see if it gets you anything. I've used something that's very nearly the same since playing SR4 back in 06, well before you claim to have made it your system. I don't claim it as my system since - in our group - two people came up with it seperately and then brough their ideas together. It's really an obvious alternative, and I'm sure that teh designers even came up with it at one point before they dropped it and decided to use the form we see in print. Sorry if your ego can't handle the truth.

Why not? It is a valid way of character advancement. And since Magic is no longer fixed and automaticly raised with every grade it is rules legal. of course your GM has to approve it but I don't see initiation as simply being sort of "my magic got stronger because I know a new secret" but rather "through research/meditation/experience I get insight into the higher tiers of magical mystery, broadening my horizon, allowing me to blossom into a new dawn of excellence." If you take profit of that by raising your magic, learning new metatechniques in addition or raise your power points is simply your choice. The only important issue with that I see is, that the amount of progress you get with each tier should be constant and mirror the efforts.

I dissapear from the internet for a single weekend and suddenly there are some pretty huge changes to the core rules. Rather than mention specific changes, which I can only know from reading DS or buying the new book, I'd like some-one to explain how exactly these changes were enacted seemingly overnight. I knew that SR4A was coming out, and I planned to buy it, but that was before I knew about all the changes. In a way it doesn't even matter how I feel about the changes, because even without buying SR4A, the RAW in my own books are now subject to SR4A errata.

Am I the only one who only found out about the changes once they had already been made?

No, you're not. Welcome back to the madhouse, I hope you're wearing your asbestos undies.

You are mixing up BP total costs with karma costs.

Kind like what I had suggested in THIS POST

My idea was baicaly going for force/2 up to the caster magic and adding the full force beyond that point:

Spell: Stunbolt Magic:6
force 1: 1/2 - 1 = 0
force 2: 2/2 - 1 = 0
force 3: 3/2 - 1 = 0
force 4: 4/2 - 1 = 1S
force 5: 5/2 - 1 = 1S
force 6: 6/2 - 1 = 2S
force 7: 6/2 + 1 - 1 = 3P
force 8: 6/2 + 2 - 1 = 4P
force 9: 6/2 + 3 - 1 = 5P
force 10: 6/2 + 4 - 1 = 6P
force 11: 6/2 + 5 - 1 = 7P
force 12: 6/2 + 6 - 1 = 8P

I've also suggested to reducing the effectiveness of First Aid on drain.

Activesofts of rating 1-4 all now cost Rating * 10000 nuyen and have a flat avail of 8 [SR4A, pg331]
Upgrading Hardware now costs half the upgrades book price and in the case of commlinks is measured in days not weeks

You serious? 10000? Interesting how that would impact the skillwired workforce. That's not cheap labor anymore.

Ok, now I'm at a loss.
If overcasting isn't the problem (I could be wrong but it seems to me that there are alot of people disagriding with you on this point) than what exactly is the problem that required this change to be addressed?

I don't get that either.

heck I dont expect to see skillwires on characters anymore. My character has them and owns a bunch of activesofts I couldn't afford them now. I guess its good i bought them when i did since i wont be buying anymore. Basically now unless I've already bought everything else I could possible think that my player would want and my money is just there to blow I wont buy these at this cost. Not being able to use edge is a big hit to there usefulness IMO, no edge and cost stupid amounts of money, I'll pass.

i suspect that the companies make their own activesofts rather then buying them on the open market.

that is, i dont think microsoft pays for each copy of windows and office that their own staff uses

the uselessness of indirect spells?

I had assumed it was the overall balance of spells between direct and indirect spells. This just forces overcasting so it does not solve that, since they can still obliterate people for really small amounts of drain. If you had to pick how many successes to withhold before you knew how many net successes you had I would like this. It would make your choices a gamble and would give magic the unpredictable quality it needs to feel like magic. Now, um force 11 stunball, net hits oh 0, soak most if not all the drain and have a nice day.

Sure they don't, but production costs are higher than before. Every worker's software now costs the company three times what it used to cost, no matter where they get it from. Must be a typo, they can't be serious about that. If that was done because of balance, something is really wrong with this edition. April Fool's wrong.

Not only that but the to and fro of
"Mage rolls"
"Defender rolls"
"Mage chooses hits"

Just doesn't jive. Mage should chose hits when he rolls. Fewer steps is faster play.
One the color side, it would be more mysterious, add tension, and put some rick in.

The current method add an extra step and is cold.

And heck, its not even a huge complaint. I just got all excited by magic being really mysterious. Then the official answer came.

It tool me three years to find what I liked about SR4 and how to deal with what I didn't. If it takes the DS community that long with SR4A, so be it.

How do you know the production costs went up and not the markup?

I'm sorry Synner, but this leaves a really bitter taste in my mouth. The problem has always been that as Cain describes even when overcasting to the max, you barely ever have to take drain so mages have been going around dropping bodies left and right faster and more accurate than a sam could and even in places where he can't get to.
I'm trying to be diplomatic here but to me, this sound, well I'm sorry but it sounds to me like a bad excuse

But he does. Before he even rolls, he declares "no more than one net hit for me, sir, thank you very much". There you go, simple, fast, no additional step.

err, ever heard of flawless digital copies? make the activesoft ones, copy as many as needed

Which does not eliminate the cost of development. What do you think software piracy is all about?

I'm reminded of news stories from when things where getting really hot in Iraq about entire Marine platoons doing steroids to bulk up. Constant contact with life threatening situations does seem to, one way or another, cause people to "raise" there relevant stats to near human maximum. Those "raises" simply do not persist after the situation is over. Also, keep in mind we're talking about near max here not somebody with a quality to go overmax. While it might not seem like much that's the difference from college gymnast and olympic gold medalist. The first is not so rare as to be pushing it as a character concept the second is.

One of the problems with SR is there is just such a large spread between normal person (attribute 3) and top of the range (attribute 9-10).

it may not, but it spreads the development cost very very thin...

and who knows what kind of mark-up they have on that soft...

Very, very thin is still three times as thick as before. That is huge. At least, if you're a soul sucking capitalist, which corp execs usually are.

Who are these characters that are running around with enough dice to regularly take no drain from overcasting a spell? We'll use Manabolt (simply because Cain did) and at Force 10. That's 5P drain. If you've got a mage that can consistently shrug off 5 drain then I'm not sure that any changes are going to be useful for you. And yes, in fights where the mage only needs to cast once or twice and can get medical attention before something else comes along, then the mage is probably doing alright. I fail to see how this is a problem.
Secondly, I often see people claiming that direct damage spells are overpowered because they can drop people otherwise tricked out to resist damage. If you feel this is a problem, then perhaps shadowrun is not the game for you? There are games where you can make characters effectively immune from the normal attacks that PCs use. This is not that game. It is difficult to make yourself resistant to everything in Shadowrun (if not impossible).

I'm not saying that I like changes that make overcasting more efficient than trying to cast the same spell normally, but claiming that a character isn't taking drain from overcasting (without use of edge or some crazy die pool modifiers) is laughable.

It's not about taking no drain, it's about taking less and consitant drain. My mage resists drain with 10 dice, 14 if I remember to use centering. 4 or 5 points of drain will be more like 1 or 2 after soaking. That's very little attrition. But if I reduce a drain of 8 or 9 by the same amount I bite the dust after two, maybe three spells. Overcasting resulting in less drain is plain retarded. If I overexcert myself, I don't expect to be less tired afterwards compared to regular performance.

You know, I've often wondered: Why did they drop the drain of spells to half Force, instead of full Force? Just something I've wondered from time to time. I know they've done this as far back as 2E SR, but why not boost it to full Force? That would fix overcasting but good.

different kind of damage tho...

But it's less to fix. If you're too scared to take real, manly drain damage, you will be out cold a lot.

You're confusing two different arguments. I'm not saying that the change to direct combat spells is good. In fact, I explicitly stated that I didn't like it. What I *did* say is that the claim that characters never suffer damage from drain through overcasting is ridiculous. As you pointed out a character with a decent die pool *and* centering still takes some drain and they are specifically designed to mitigate drain.

As to the change itself, I'm actually a little unclear as to what problem it is attempting to solve. It is obviously not the perceived issue with overcasting (which I agree is not actually a problem). If it is an attempt to make direct combat spells less drain efficient then why not add to their base drain? This change seems unnecessarily complicated and leads to the odd circumstances of making a character choose to overcast for less drain (but only for direct combat spells). If this choice were consistent throughout all magic then that would be fine as it'd be an aspect of the magical system as a whole.

If the issue was that no one was using indirect combat spells then I'd suggest looking at those spells and figuring out why rather than making direct combat spells less desirable. I believe it is because the resistance test for indirect spells is commonly higher and overlaps with the resistance tests that the target would be doing in response to everyone else in the party (namely against mundane attacks). These spells are considered less effective in those situations where a street samurai could be shooting the target (and taking no drain, of course.) This also seems to be the purpose of increasing object resistance. But again, that has far more consequences than just making indirect combat spells more desirable. I'm not sure what characters are around that will be consistently beating drones (OR 6) on spells to effect them with illusions or non-combat spells. Perhaps making indirect combat spells more useful would have been a better way to go so as to not inadvertently cause so many other changes?

I'm pretty sure I'm not the one confusing stuff right now. Especially, since you got my point.

5P drain is only 15 dice needed to consistendly resist. So an elven shaman with charisma 8 willpower 5 and a fetish for the spell. Or a dwarf hermetic with logic 6 willpower 7 and a fetish.
Pretty easy and no need for centering

Hell with focused concentration 2 the elf does not need to have a fetish, and once centering is gained it becomes routine to resist 5 drain.

I have more dice to resist it and less drain to resist. Woo-Hoo. Honestly in SR1 I was too chicken to cast spells 90% of the time the drain was a beast for little gain unless you cast one of the few broken spells. EVer since SR2 though there were options for virtually no drain casting and I was a little unhapopy. I guess I want a happy medium.

Is this some sort of spell caster joke? A happy "medium"?

just a small question..

for all the people with positive and negitve things to say about the SR4A

HAVE YOU PLAYTESTED THE NEW RULES?

YES? please post how these rules either worked, or didn't work, for YOUR game
NO? PLEASE get off the ARES Soapbox and try them.

its like most jobs when the boss makes a change and everyone complains. they say it sucks, but cannot offer up a soluntion
do I agree with all the changes I have found so far? NO, but I am gonna playtest them to see if they will work in MY game
I will also keep up with changes for when I play in missions to keep certain PCs mission legal

chummers,
hope you earn your nuyen in the hand,
not the bullet in the brain pan

I brought this up in the petition post, which I now realize should have gone here. The group I run for learned very early on that overcasting stun bolt is very effective. It hasn't really been an "issue" as they guy that prefers to run the mage has drain phobia so only overcasts as a last ditch effort. And by the RAW, it is smarter for a mage with a magic attribute of 5 to throw a force 9 stun bolt. Since you round down before adding the mods that means the drain will be 3. If most mages have about 9 dice to resist drain, on the average they will never take hardly any drain. If they do take drain it'll be a point or two, not enough to impair the mage, and easily healed after (time permitting) with a first aid roll. Since you need at least one net hit to make it stick, the target will get 10 Stun, which will drop most folks out there. The changes will add a point to the drain if what I'm reading on the post are correct. That does make it more risky, but I can see the point others have made. Looking at my player who doesn't overcast (drain phobia), if he wants to drop someone in one shot casting the same spell at force 5, he's going to have to resist off 6 (F/2 Round down -1, + 5 for net hits) boxes to dole out the same 10 damage. Sure it's stun damage, but boxes are boxes. Fill up with enough stun and you are out. They don't "punish" the dude with the light pistol pushing up his damage with a great shot. Waiting to buy the book, so I haven't downloaded PDF to see it for myself, but just from what I've seen here, I'm going to side with the folks that say it's a bad "fix".

No, it does add drain after the first net hit as only those hits allocated to increase the damage of a DCS also increase the DV.

You get Armor, Body, and Reaction against bullets and melee. You only get Willpower and thats it against Direct combat spells.
(Dodge and Countspelling excepted)

So make things similar. Willpower to avoid the spell (Reaction for bullets). Body to resist damage (both cases). Counterspelling is added to the Willpower Test in the case of spells, Armor to bullets in the damage resistance.

Now that Force 5 Stunbolt has a slim chance of effecting the target AND he gets to resist the damage you do manage. On a Force 10, he's going to be hurting, but he won't be unconscious (you, of course, will be bleeding).

Some I don't need to. This come from experience as a gamer. When a new rule is introduced I can see how it interacts with the existing rules set. The alteration to DCS drain has only made the problem they were trying to solve worse.

the change wasn't adressing overcasting. how many times do we need to repeat this?

Are you stopping at the first mention of "overcasting" and not reading the rest of the post?

The issue is that the change makes overcasting a better idea in almost all cases for Direct Combat Spells, something that goes against both good sense and the canon fluff/stories.