A gentleman's challenge.

Nice idea.

Seriously? A sam? IME, that's probably the easiest and most common thing for a mage to replace (or at least, irritate the player that's running a sam by taking over his job every time there are bad guys around) on a team.

Sam's role: killstick
Mage with a few spells for damage and speed: killstick

Wait, what was I thinking? This is the internet. Back to your armchair theory arguments.

Honestly, with the constant generalizing, exaggeration and well (pardon the term) bullshit about mages being "powerhouses" and "replacing entire teams" I'm willing to give hermit 450 BP so he can show us this one man shadowrun team.

It doesn't even need to be compared to any other archetype build for build, because apparently 'mages are godmode' and don't actually need anyone else.

It's a surprise we don't see this build being slagged more often on the forums.



Regardless, all he has to do is build it, and prove his grandstanding with actual numbers.

I like knasser's challenge better, but at this point anything to back up his statements would be fine.

Later today, when I have time, okay?

Very early, rough proposal: Possession tradition, possibly an Ougun Voodoo, Spells Stunball and -bolt.


I'll see what I can come up with.

All builds should be considered under SR4 rules, not SR4A, regarding effectiveness. The point I was trying tto make is that the changes make such charatcers much less viable, so under the new rules, a viable one man shadowrunner team should not be possible.

Heh. Sure. The first time I tried to produce a samurai drop-in, I went with a possession tradition.

I'll build my character and I'll start the thread in a bit. I think at the very least it will show you that magicians aren't overpowered or make other character types redundant.

K.

Actually, I dropped in a little comment, sure, but I want to expand that a bit.

How many people involved in these "OMG my mage is useless now" threads have actually played a game/session with a character using these rules?

Because I'm serious when I call all of this stuff armchair theorizing. I can't tell you how many times I've left these boards thinking "OMG that stuff they were talking about is crazy broken" etc. only to find out during a game that what was such a big deal on DS...barely mattered at all during gameplay. (Mostly back in the SR3 days; by now I've learned enough to just ignore the gaming internet arguments except to wonder at them.)

And so it is with most of the "biggie" rules discussions on the boards. Remember long shots, and how "broken" they are? Sure, broken in a vacuum where there's no GM and players are rules-bending asshats. So on and so forth.

Just because threshold increased by one or two does not mean the mages in my groups will suddenly start rolling better. They fail with OR 3 and OR 4 often enough. With OR 4 and OR 6 they will fail more often, which will not increase their fun, nor will the group will become suddenly happy because he cannot support them like he used to anymore. It just means that more time will be clogged with the matrix to forge or disable camera feeds, for example. I really can see how that will improve my game.

Balance restored! Fun disabled! Gloaters and Grievers still have fun, obviously, but that is not a good thing.

Admittedly, none.

But I don't have to.

Because I've played against OR 4, and it's not trivial by any means. Nor is it a guaranteed success.

So I can effectively know that OR 6 will only be worse.

I'm not going to totally disagree with hermit on the power of mages, especially when you add in the really poorly designed spirits in street magic.(Task and guardian spring to mind) Also possession tradition is really abusable. A mage can be built in order to be broken, though must people can build broken characters that aren't mages. Thing is in play I have rarely seen broken magicians. My main problem is the things they decided to nerf are the things that did not make mages overpowered, its the things you kind of want your mage doing like helping the team sneak past security. Or the nerf doesn't actually stop the broken part, I'm looking at the drain fix for combat spells. I really like the flavor of it and I think direct combat spells could use a nerf, but this fix motivates the behavior that made them broken.

That's exactly my point.
Nowhere is the crunch of possession spirits incorporating the fluff that all possession traditions share, ie ghosts are to be used very carefully.
In fact with stuff like channeling it directly opposes the fluff and promotes running around possessed 24/7.

With upping the OR of a spell that when being used should have a high success rate because else you opt for plan b all that has been accomplished is mages
needing to minmax their char if they intend to use such spells.
That by doing this they achieve general powerlevels that can really be game breaking has of course not been considered.

I can see why they wanted to make it more difficult for direct combat spells to affect non-living targets, from a flavor standpoint. Magic is essentially mana, and will be very effective against living targets. You're pumping energy into a body. All you need to do is pop a bunch of cells in some organs, and the guy goes down. Damaging metal and plastic enough to cause systems to shut down, is a different story. It should be tough.

You walk into the lobby with a mask spell. The guard, with a WPR of 4, will probably roll one success and not be able see through the mask. But a physical spell will not affect a camera without being cast at a very high level, and with critical success on the test. But look how the spell works. You trying to affect the "brain" of the camera. How good are you at understanding the function of circuitry, to be able to direct your mana to affect it?

If you were directing the spell at the camera I might agree with you. But you are instead bending light around you so you actually just look different. The guard seeing that the illusion is a fake due to a good roll makes sense, the camera not even seeing the illusion does not make sense.

No, actually I don't.
If you were correct I could only turn invisible for objects i can perceive but apparently it does work against hidden cameras and ones i move to after casting as well.

I've been away from the forums for a while, but when I heard about the Anniversary edition I was really stoked. I popped back in and saw all of the hubub about the magic changes...now, I'd have to see them in action to be sure, but to be honest...I'm not really that miffed.

WHY?

Because there is finally a decent reason to make sure that you have riggers and hackers around. Every game I've run, the only people who play mundanes are typically people who are new to the game. Because magic works on everything, and in my experience, object resistance was kind of a joke. It never seemed to make drones any harder to affect in real play. I understand the affect on illusions, and I can see the issue here, but doesn't that just mean that you'd have to hack the cameras. Magical illusions would still be useful against people, and still have the possibility of affecting machines, but technology actually becomes a serious challenge for magic users, so that all-magic or magic heavy groups become less useful in some ways. This isn't really a bad thing, since all-tech groups are completely useless against anything magical.


Not saying that this won't turn out terribly, as I haven't played with the new ruleset. I'm just saying that I appreciate that there has finally been some effort made to reign in magic.

Um...there are tons of reasons to make sure you have riggers and hackers around.




I think you're working under some serious misconceptions here.




Really? You think OR 4 is a joke?




Maybe you've missed all the probability slinging that's gone around in the recent threads. OR 6 is not "a serious challenge". OR 6 is regularly unconquerable for all but the most powerful, min maxed mages.

Do the mages in your games have 18+ spellcasting dice?

How long did it take for them to get there?

How much karma did they spend?

I agree that under the new rules, it becomes very difficult. It doesn't break the game though, since we aren't all forced to play mages. What is difficult for a mage is trivial for a hacker/rigger who just spoofs the drone, or breaks in and feeds the camera false information. To put it another way, how come none of us were complaining about how impossible it was for street sams and hackers to banish spirits? Or counterspell?

This is definitely a nerf for mages, but it's not a game-breaker.

I want to tell you to shut up right now. But I won't. I have nothing against hackers (riggers are almost an entirely different class of character), but for me and my group hackers are not fun to play. They sit there waiting waiting waiting, "OH! CAMERAS!" Roll dice, it's gone. Waiting waiting waiting...

Making the game fun for the hacker requires that everyone else go get pizza.

The matrix is like the grapple rules of D&D:

I want to tell you to learn how to play a goddamn roleplaying game, but I won't.

Grapple rules are really simple once you've used them like, twice. The only person that they might "ruin" the combat for is the poor fool doing the grappling, who is usually left tussling with an enemy for several rounds while everybody else runs around stabbing stuff.

Hackers, similarly, are only a serious problem if you:

1. Didn't plan ahead, and keep looking up stats/rules
2. Insist on resolving the entire hack before moving on

The Matrix uses the same initiative intervals for a reason; it's an action that you can do in combat like anything else. You want to hack that guy's gun? Fine. Wait your turn, while the sammy fills him with lead. I definitely agree that Shadowrun is a challenge to run because of the number of different rules, but if you have a hacker, it's not the end of the world to look up the damn rules, make some cards, and move on. The basic mechanics are the same, so I don't see what the problem is. Just because you happen to prefer mages to hackers doesn't mean that making hackers obsolete, or mages able to do everything, is a good idea.

While I don't think the hacking rules are that hard to integrate into the flow of the game if you think mages are that overpowered and hackers are obsolete maybe you should reread the rules a bit. Sure there are broken things in magic, but there are broken things throughout this game. Unless you are a douche when making your character and go out of your way to exploit broken rules, mages in practice wont shine more than others and hackers will have plenty of time to shine.

It is a very bad think, becouse know many spell that are designed to affect technolygy , all of a sudden can't do that anymore with any kind of consitancy.
I bet all those special effect wizards who work for hollywood are really happy know that they cot all fired for not being able to do theit job, becouse the fundemental rules of magic in the world changed over night.

1) I tried to be a little humorous about that, even posting the D&D errata from April Fool's Day.



1) My GM doesn't plan. Anytime he tries we do something he hadn't planned for anyway. There is nothing I as a player can do to fix this.
2) We've tried that too. The GM managed one session providing enough detail to make it worth it. Then it came down to "roll some dice vs X." Then it was, "Here, roll dice vs X and another player will do the opposing rolls as to not slow things down for everyone." Then the player scrapped their character and became a vampire (for about three sessions before swapping again).

Yes. I have fairly extensive GMing experience with magicians. One of the reasons I tend not to run around in a panic each time someone posts another "magic is broken" post. Usually a gentle nudge toward the visibility modifiers and a quoting of the autofire rules calms things down a bit.

K.

Okay Hermit. I'm waiting for your "one-man shadowrunner team" that can handle everything the samurai can straight out of chargen.

The thread, in case you've missed it, is here.

K.

And every spell they could get they paid for, with money, karma and time (both to get and then to learn)
If you charged a sami karma ever time he bought a new toy from arsenal, I'm pretty sure they'd get fed up right away.
If you charged a hacker karma ever time be bought a new program they'd scream bloody murder.
Charge a mage karma for a new spell, then say "damn, that mage spending karma to improve himself... guess I'd better nerf him."

Really?
So I can't get delta grade ware?
type "o"
biocomptabability?
adaptsin?
cyberware packages?

seems I can rather easily increase my effective essence.
Then to be a prick I can become a CZ and cram even more ware in, upto -6 essence, so by the time everything is said and one I would have 30-40 essence of gear in me....

You can get every single piece of ware that tacks together and still not be in -6 essence. You could even get pretty much every piece of ware you want for any given character without even going below zero essence. So it's not that big of a limit for mundanes.

Like what exactly?
can you name a magical event or phenomena with the exception of ritual casting a mundane does not have the ability to counter?

Hahahahaha! I haven't thought about them. They are totally boned now, unless they are world class casters with world class equipment. Which simply does not make sense. Awesome, thank you

Well, that would be spirits of course! Unless the mundanes use Spirit-Slayer™ Ammunition, formerly known als APDS.

Most cameras include internal computers, which are OR 4 according to the old rules. We're not talking about 1930's cameras. The other examples of OR 3 are way, way bellow the tech level for a digital camera.

I think electronic equipment, here, refers to components and simple circuits, like a detonator. Otherwise, a computer is electronic equipment too.

Actually they should be alive and happy since those things are recorded with implants so normal illusions work on them.

Couldn't they just ritual cast? Or use a spirit task to assist them? In real life, special effects wizards take weeks, sometimes months of planning and preparation to achieve an effect. I hardly think it's world-breaking that SR special effects wizards might have to take a little time to prep a spirit or a ritual.

I think you're right - security cameras should probably be OR6 if you go by the examples in the SR4A book along with computers. They certainly rank above advanced plastics and alloys and "Electronic Equipment" to me suggests things like volt meters and hi-fi speakers, etc. However, the "cameras are OR 4" notion comes from a post from Synner (one of the devs) who said that they were OR 4. Which is why you're finding people using that.

K.

You say that as though the months of surgery, recovery time, and overall loss of sanity/character control that comes with the options you are mentioning are somehow equivalent to the relative ease and convenience of, say, Initiating.

Really, the fact that this is infuriating so many people just proves the point that magic has become too overpowered in Shadowrun; we all just gave up and went for Awakened, because cyber and gear requires too much bookkeeping and compromise.

Or Stick And Shock, which while it doesn't reduce armor is Electrical Damage and thus not subject to the Immunity To Normal Weapons rule.

Of course, you shouldn't be countering spirits with mages anyway. Spirits are there to counter mages because Critter Powers aren't subject to Counterspelling.

What sanity loss, it's really hard to make someone a CZ if you using all the other options, there just isn't enought usefull ware to fill 5,999 essence if you use all the options availebull to you.

Which can take months and sometimes a journey to alternate planes of reality facing terrors beyond mortal comprehension at the threat of the loss of your very soul.....
Oh, and karma.




So if a cop gives you a speeding ticket for no good reason and you become upset over it, it proves you were speeding?
You have some very interesting logic my friend.
Say a hacker needed to pay karma just to BUY programs with. And that said Hacker just had the thresholds on all his tests on say.... drones, go up by 2. Then tell the hacker that any time he gets successes using his most effective programs he suffer feed back at a rate of one box of damage per success.

Then tell him that complaining you've just gooned his class PROVES his class was overpowered in the first place.

Let me know how that works out for you. Seriously try it at your table, and let us know how well it goes over.

It may be a bit off-topic, but there two things recently posted that are wrong in my opinion.
a) Unless a character gets a negative quality he is just as sane with 0,001 Essence as he is with 6.
b) it does not matter if the Stick-n-Shock ammo does electrical damage. It is not a magic weapon and so the spirit's armor applies, but it is reduced as any other armor.

Point being, mundanes are not helpless against spirits who are attacking them.

Yes, but once he goes into negative essence and becomes a cyber-zombie, this is no longer true.

Did you read my reply at all, there isn't really any reson to become a CZ.

Well, awakened can get deltaware as well and since they can initiate without limits they can go as low as 1 essence which, at the point mundanes can afford full deltaware, will most likely still leave them a magic of 6 or more.

What might be true for SimSense, is far less true for regular Trid. It's still out there.

You're so 2040. Really.

Point where it says that electricity is subject to ItNW. I recall that electricity is elemental damage, just like Lightning Bolt is.

In 4A at least, the immunity to normal weapons description drops elemental damage as a way past it. Still you can carry a taser which does 8s and 1/2s armor and that will drop most spirits, except absurdly high force ones.

...
*The silence is punctuated by an added tally mark next to "Stay with SR4" and not "Upgrade to SR4A"*

Spirit-B-Gone Tasers™. Now with extra juice.

Heck 1 net success will hurt a force 8 spirit with a taser. Also stick and shock in an automatic weapon and using a wide spread to reduce the dodge and your net successes will probably knock the base DV to like 10-12, bye bye spirit. Heck it was easier in 4E, stick and shock just ignored all of the spirits armor. The claim that mundanes are boned when facing magic is not substantiated by the rules of the game. It might be by the fluff of the game but not the rules.

If the Spirit merely manifests itself and tries to beat them to death, then yes, they'll be fine. If, however, decides to, y'know, ACT LIKE A SPIRIT, they're hosed.

Bending light? Oh, right, you're thinking of the manipulation version of Trid Phantasm.