Ok guys I have been lurking in these forums for a long time now and have been an avid player of SR from 2nd edition onward.
That being said I have a major problem with the way power and mana bolt work according to the rules.

ex. Lets say I am playing my pistol using orc, good with a gun and about as sturdy as a tank.
and lets go a little firther and say that he was lucky enough to take Magic resistance 4 and has willpower 5
That means at most he will be able to roll 9 dice against a manabolt.

However lets look at the mage.
Magic of 6 a little steep but very reasonable
Spellcasting of 6 (Spec. Combat) 8 again for a dedicated boomer not that hard
A totem that gives a +2 to combat spells is not that hard to get
A power focus of 2 is almost required by ever mage I have ever seen in a game.
That is a total of: 18 dice. In and of it self I have absolutely no problem with the mage rolling 18 dice for magic spells sense I can roll just as many if not more for a gunshot.

This is where things get screwed up.

Manabolt: No to hit made, ignores all armor with no ability to modify them to help, resisted by willpoer which almost nothing will give a bonus too, and by the way that casting a spell works there is no way to get the damage to go below the force the spell is cast at.

An example:

Mage A casts spell at nonmage B, Mage A wants him to die in a hurry and overcasts a Force 12 Manabolt at him. which would have a drain of just 4 with the propper fetish.

Mage A rolls his: 18 dice due to his various items and specializations.
Nonmage rolls his: 9 dice. because only mages can have counterspelling or any spell defense other than magic resistance.

Here is where it gets totally broken:

Lets say the nonmage rolls well and get 5 successes with his 9 dice.
However a simple average roll for the mage would yield 6 or so.

If Mage A gets just ONE success more than whatever he is casting that spell at they will automatically take at least 13 damage with no other ways to lessen it other than platelet factories and the like.

Now not that casting it against another mage is any better, another mage just has a chance to roll a few more dice, maybe 12 or so to try to beat the roughly 18 or so of the combat mage.

Essentially if a combat based mage wants you to die, the only chance you have to live is to roll more successes on your dice while he rolls about double what you do.

Every other attack in the game has to 1 make a to hit that can be lessened due to dodge, reflexes ect.
Every other attack get to be resisted with body/will + armor
Not a direct spell though it is all of their dice from gear, specializations ect versus the targets will/body

How is this balanced.

Answer: It's not. Manabolt and Stunbolt are two of the best spells in the game, and make the elemental spells more or less obsolete. Sad.

1
Large die pools in the SR4 mechanics are pretty unbalanced; you can see the same general problem with someone shooting you with that much time and CP put into shooting you.

2
A spell is a complex action, while shooting someone is only a simple.
The 18+ dice shooter can hit you twice for the same investment of time and kill you just as dead. To compare to a AOE spell, use a semi-automatic grenade launcher, so you can put out two grenades in a single IP. And the shooter does not risk taking drain every time he pulls the trigger.

Even a mage with 12 dice of drain resistance has only a ~60% chance of actually taking no drain at all when resisting 4 hits of drain.

Probability table
(assuming 4 hits of drain, 12 dice to resist)
4 drain ~1%
3 drain ~5%
2 drain ~13%
1 drain ~22%
no drain ~60%

And note that this assumes a mage with magic 6, 2 drain stats at 6, an relevant totem, a force 2 power focus, etc
That's quite hard to get compared to a guy who simply shoots you with ~20 dice

This is assuming a hard-maxed mage going first against a street samurai, overcasting a spell at maximum Force, with no counterspelling available to the target, no visual modifiers to the caster, no background count, and a spellcaster willing to attempt to soak 6 points of physical Drain in order to take someone out. And for all that, despite an 18 to 9 dice pool advantage, he could roll badly and have it all be for nothing. Given the high Drain, this is more or less a desperation tactic.

Honestly, it's not as unbalanced as you're making it out to be. SR4, as many people have said, is a game of "eggshells with hammers", where it is relatively easy to make lethal attacks and relatively hard to resist them. That's why stealth and strategy are so important in the game.

On the street samurai's end, give him an Ingram White Knight LMG with gyro-stabilization, and a high dice pool, and see how many times the mage can avoid being spattered across the sidewalk.

Why does the GM always ask how is the mage balanced when the street sam can do much the same?

This is why pretty much everyone in non-missions games I'm played in is a mage. Maybe not a good mage, but good enough to have 4+ dice of counterspell. If you have a decently sized team you can soak direct magic with getting >5 hits on average on the teamwork test. If you are paranoid and have countermagic focuses and spirits providing magical guard it gets even better. If you can soak 10 hits (like two people with 6 skill, 4 with 5 skill, each with a 3 pt CS focus, two 6pt magic guard spirits) on average you can probably deal with the really major mojo by using edge as you can get 17 hits on average. If you run into grade 12 initiates often....

I thought fetishes gave bonus dice do the drain test, not reduce it.

I have come to agree with the following arguments made

0. As in the zeroeth law. The mage won't likely go first. He may get shot, blinded, flashed, stunned or who knows what else.
1. No counterspelling. Thats like saying the baddies have no armor.
2. No visual Modifiers. It is shadow run, there could at the very least be a lighting issue.

Neutral
1. Willing to soak 6 points of physical. Its sometimes better to "take one for the team" if you can ambush N (N>6) enemies or Damage the big bad boss. So yes, desperate. Ohh so effective.

I cannot accept a few of these
1. No background count. I hear this often enough to start to wonder if large portions of the planet should have them.
2. Samurai with cannon... I can sneak a mage into more places. I can walk a mage down the street. An LMG is a large thing of beauty. A thing of incredible beauty.

But I like the imbalance. It lets the dependable combatant, the samurai, fight most of the fights. The spellslinger can't do this every combat. Has to choose when to risk about 4-6(or 6-8 if the AOE) boxes of physical. Personally, I would buy the drain and accept 2-3 to hit a huge target, or to hit a group.

This may be because of my experiences with healing in 4th. One good Medic in the group, and 5 of those boxes (yeap the physical) are gone a few minutes after the fight.

Powerbolt? Psh. Manabolt and STUNBOLT are the killers. But why, you ask, why. I'll tell you why.

Because unless you are absolutely on the ball or the street sam is asleep at the wheel, you can still die.

The last time this happened to me (Sunday), I was using cover and there was minor background count (which should really be everywhere). Even down 5-6 dice, he still threw around 11 or 12. He overcast a stunbolt to 12. I rolled willpower, and lowered damage taken to 9. Biomonitor triggers the autoinjector, suddenly I have High Pain Tolerance 6.

On my turn I used my APDS-packing assault rifle for a short burst and a long burst (both narrow) to just fire through the barrier the guy had hidden behind. What does that get you? Me rolling 8 dice twice, and him not managing to completely dodge either. So he expired messily.

Why? Because big guns firing on automatic can still turn you to paste, even if you're hiding.
Yes, they're powerful spells. But that doesn't mean they're game-breakers unless you let them.

How could you lower damage to 9 if it was a Force: 12 direct combat spell? It does 12 damage plus net hits. If you got more net hits than the spellcaster, you shouldn't have lowered the damage - you should have completely negated it.

You know...that's a good point. I totally forgot about that.
Shows what I get for not playing a mage for a year or two.

Regardless of the momentary rules cock-up, I believe my point about automatic weapons still counts.

At my table four out of six party are mages (One person got tired of their mundane and wants to switch to a mage.) The other two are adepts. One of our mages tries really hard not to just constantly push the "I win" button. You can with 400 bps you can make a character that can pretty much just break the games back, if you only play with rules as written.

It's why if you don't like a rule you change it at your table.

Magicians rather suck against drones and vehicles as well, since they're immune to stun, mana spells, mind affecting spells and are highly processed objects for the purposes of object resistance vs. Direct Spells. This is no small disadvantage when you consider that combat drones are for all intents and purposes vehicles w/ weapon mounts and as such do not suffer recoil modifiers since they are designed as stable combat platforms. Sure, they only get to fire once per pass due to the "firing weapon systems" option being a complex action, but that hardly matters much when they're so well suited to making that single attack into a full burst, plus they get 3 Passes a turn anyway! And hell, like I said, they're considered vehicles-- while it's largely up to the individual gm, it's not out of the question that a big ol' combat drone like a Steel Lynx or Crimson Samurai could mount heavy machine guns or even a GE Vigilant Light Autocannon with little or no penalty-- lord knows a modified Tomino probably could no problem. Dunkelzahn help you if it's a few jacked in rigger rollin' via hotsim manning those turrets.

Meanwhile, the Samurai can handle a mixed force of drones, counterspellers, Spirits and guards the same way he handles most problems: Burst fire and well-aimed HE grenades.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: GMs, if you intend for a combat to be challenging for the team yet you're making the opponents all uniformly vulnerable to any spells other than Powerball and Elemental AoEs it can mean only one thing: You're doing it wrong. Sorry, but it's true.

Hey there,

woo-hoo, my first post to the Dumpshock-Forums!

Anyway: yeah, a mage will paste you if you don't have one of your own to help you with counterspelling. Same as a tricked-out 3-IP-Sammy will paste you unless you've got someone on your team to keep up with him. And even then, you'd better wear armor (well, you'd better wear armor in any case, but that's beside the point).

Let me put up a counter-example: a sammy shooting you with his Ares Predator IV loaded with APDS (DV5, AP-5 if I'm not mistaken).

As you stated yourself, Revolution, rolling 18 dice for a shot isn't that hard to do for someone specializing in guns, so we'll accept that as premise.
You play an orc, so Body of 6 shouldn't be a problem. I'll assume Reaction of 6 as well for simplicity's sake.

The sammy will fire twice with an average of 6 hits. Your Reaction test will net you 2 hits on average, leaving him with 4 net hits. You roll Body + Armor (I'll assume an armor rating of 10, just because I can, and subtract the -5) 6+5=11 dice total, for an average of 3 hits --> sammy still has one net hit, leaving you with 6 damage. Second shot, another 6 damage, making you just as dead as the powerbolt.

If you like, switch the pistol for a SMG and fire bursts, for a higher DV (recoil is easily absorbed).

Any combat-oriented character is deadly for an enemy just standing out in the open and taking the hit. But start throwing in cover, lighting, smoke, background count etc. and watch those huge dice pools dwindle. Of course, occasionally the players - mage or sammy - will still walk all over a squad of goons - but that's okay. They're entitled to a bit of fun. The next run may be in a corp facility (no heavy guns) or in a toxic area (help, where's my magic!) and that'll even things out again a bit.

I'm going to repeat this for the nth time - make sure you are applying full visibility and cover modifiers to spellcasting! This is not SR3 where you can afford to skip the modifiers, here they subtract directly from the caster's dice pool.

Those are the rules and they're there for a reason. In most typical combat situations (not high noon in the middle of a street showdown or an ambush) a magician losing 6-7 dice from his spellcasting pool is usual (ie."partial"/good cover is -4, partial light is -2, if he's popping up from cover himself another -1, smoke/fog/thermal smoke/Petite Brume/etc will add further, if the area has background count that factors in too). Now that his 18 dice poll has been knocked down to 11, compare to the samurai, and don't forget to use Edge for the sam if needed.

Unless the magician and his target are standing in the middle of an empty street under the noon sun, the magician should rarely -if ever- be throwing those 18 dice, and when that does happen the street sam deserves to get plastered for standing in the middle of the road with no cover or protection.

I've just run a firefight in a dim-lit packed parking lot between runners and yaks - and every single one of the PC magician's (dicepool 18) combat AoE spells and manabolts fizzled—he's seriously considering elemental spells.

Trust me stitch there is a mage I have yet to bust out, but it is just brutal. Good against vehicles, drones, people, aircraft. It involves drones with rocket launchers with spirits in them. It does have more then that to smash through your enemies. Me and a friend worked on it and it's vicious.

To sum up what's been said:
* A sammy with a good gun and good dice pool will also be able to kill someone easily enough.
* Cover is the difference between life and death, both with guns and magic.
* Modifiers also apply to mages : smoke, lightning/visibility and background counts are common in a fight.
* Drones are great, they're likely to be more common than security guards and they have object resistance vs spells.
* And don't forget spirits and paracritters (those should be more commonly used in security that what I can see in most of the games I play).
* Drain isn't an issue for the first spell, but in the long run, those stun/physical damage boxes you can't heal can be a burden.
* Geek the mage first!

I'd be more worried about possession than combat spells with regards to game balance.

I'd be more worried about spirits as a whole, actually.

It seems SOP for people fighting a mage in 'open warfare' should be to pop a smoke grenade and switch to thermals first thing. Completely bones the mage. Maybe sec troopers just come standard with smoke and flashbang grenades duct taped together, and throw em both if anything resembling a mage shows up. Remember everyone just knows when a mage casts a spell, so they can instantly kick into 'anti magic' and 'geek the mage' mode.

i call on your bluff and rise you some build-points, i wanna see!

How do you recognize a mage, and more importantly, are you really going to focus fire on the mage, when his team-comrades with uber-reflexes, grenades and assault cannons are equally deadly? This ain't D&D, where you gotta geek mages first because they do most damage, but fortunately only have d4-hitpoints, while Fighters can soak tons of damage, but suck in damage dealing. This is Shadowrun. Being caught open without any cover is fatal for anybody in this game. Everybody has a fireball-equivalent in this damn game.

Modifiers fix all horrendous DPs.

And yes, Spirits are FAR scarier than any spell, hence why when I play a spell caster it's a handful of useful spells and a cart full of summoning dice. Only thing to get in my way there is Background count

If a guy in a combat situation fits at least one of the following, he's probably a mage:

* The guy who acts last
* The guy who has magic thingies (clothes, fetishes...)
* The guy who isn't a cyborg
* The guy who isn't shooting (or who's missing) nor charging
* The guy who isn't a cyborg, isn't shooting, charging and not cowering away (that'd be the bad face) or looking cool (that'd be the good face)
* The guy who's identified as a mage by your astrally perceiving teammate



Yes because the mage is more unpredictable, can have spirits and is the magical protection. Once he's dead, your own mage can take care of the opposition much more easily.

But to make sure, it's better to geek everyone first, that's why you've got mortars.

Here are some very basic anti-magic tactics corporate security forces would be trained in:

SOP anti-spellcasting tactics:

• Throw down a smokescreen (if possible a thermal smokescreen).
• Deploy flashbangs or flashpaks.
• Use cover.
• Use drones and sentry guns to complement metahumans.

Active magic anti-spellcasting tactics (in combination with all of the above and keeping in mind you are on the defender):

• Magician casts a hemisphere mana barrier over his unit (also useful against spirits).
• Magician uses Counterspelling (particularly good if combined with mana barriers).
• If anything breaks through the mana barrier, the magician holds next action to nuke the spirit as it materializes (or at least point it out to your team mates so they can concentrate fire).
• Use watchers/spirits to spot magic users and spirits.

Submachine Guns are sufficient. But having mortars surely help. So do grenades...
And you'll still want to geek everyone who you can lay your crosshair on, no matter if it's the Trollmage, the Elf Supercybersamurai, the Dwarven Face (with automatics), the Superadept-Gunfu-Bunny, or the fat hacker-brat (who's in control of several steel lynx all shooting at you).

It absolutely doesn't matter who you geek first. Your opponents are all dangerous. And a mage assensing and searching for the enemy mage is a mage wasting an action that he could as well just thrown fireballs/shoot somebody with his own pistols/summoning spirits/doing whatever more sensible.

"Oh my, that uberfast-acting orkish guy with an assault cannon turning my cover into shreds of worthless slag and still shooting on my position is less scarier than the goofy-looking guy there who might or might not be a mage..." Shadowrun has a spiral-of-death-system (though not that deadly as it was in SR 3 anymore, fortunately). You don't have 150 hitpoints. You've got 8 + half constitution damage boxes. As somebody already pointed it out, everybody's an egg-shell with hammers.

The rules say that when a mage casts a spell, everyone automagically knows that A) who the guy that just the spell is and B) that he is a guy who casts spell.

So really its very easy to recognize the mage - wait for him to cast a spell.

Most anti-mage tactics also are good anti-whatever tactics.

Nah, recognizing a guy doing magic-stuff is a perception-test with a 6-Force threshold. Of course, every other perception-dicepool-modifier still applies too. Wasting your time to look out who might or might not be a mage is a dumb thing in combat. In SR, everybody's a high priority target, and goofing around only gets you killed. You shoot whoever you can, whenever you can, as often you can... And you deserve to die like a moronic stormtrooper when you don't go into cover.

We're discussing people throwing down force 12 stunbolts here. Even if you have an intuition of 1 and default, and there is smoke and its dark, you'll still make the threshold. Plus I didn't think it cost an action to do that, it was reactive? I am totally prepared to be wrong.

You still have to have a hit first, even if the treshhold is 1. And that's not that easy, with darkness and all, and without you being awakened yourself (+2), astrally perceiving (+2) or the caster has a shamnic mask ("2) (SR4, p. 167). So, for a mundane (say, perception 2, int 2), with some of that smoke people want thrown around, noticing who is a mage is quite difficult.

That's why your rigger/hacker friend has programmed a nifty utility to scan the visual data and recognize typical spellcaster behavior.

What's "typical behaviour", and how does that differ from a sensor/perception check?

A manabolt force 12 would have a threshold of -6, accordingly to the rules, I think it would as obvious as a grenade exploding, and if there are darkness, smoke, it would apply to the mage casting the spell, so bye bye to his 18 DP.

Testiculation . . waving your arms/hands and talking bollocks *g*

I was under the impression that was not necessary unless you took a geasa requiring it. I thought they just had to look at you, mean like...and aparently all CHA 1 Sams have a permanent mean look too (must be a body modification they get thrown in by their street doc), so you'd be trying to gank the Sams and Mages first

Typical behavior is something like I mentioned in my list... The idea would be to use one (or more) camera(s) to scan the battlefield (it can be in a drone, woven into clothes or you can use the output of the cyber-eyes of the team members) and identify each opponent. A software follows each opponent, analyzing their behavior.
When the software sees someone who looks like he's concentrating (facial expression, modification in the way he moves/acts), it tags it as a mage about to cast a spell.

For me, this is the kind of help a tactical hacker will bring to his team. But that's clearly a particular play-style which may not suit everyone.

But concentrating might fit just about everyone else - especially other hackers (and those doing AR might even "wave their hands").

And, more importantly: What test does the drone make to spot the mage? What test does the hacker or system make to recognise the mage as a mage?

Another thing I couldn't find on this topic is: Do drones even get that perception check with (6-Force), or is that something 'mental' like shamanic mask?

Stahlseele I sent you the character concept. It might not be the full sheet, but I think you get the idea on why the character is overpowered.

under SR3 Rules, even WITH the geas it ain't necessary . . it just makes it easier for you to do your thing *g*
and i just allways wanted to use that example in propper context ^^
and yes, street sams are my top to kill list . . untill i've figured out who's doing the enemy magical support, then i gank him immediately and go back to killing samurais . . as i am mostly playing the mundane combat monster(and most of the time, the only one in the group, so it's my job to keep the others alive) and thus i know what kind of damage a street samurai can dish out and take in

And, if you build your mage effectively, they can do that too. And have countermagic. And can manabolt spirits if shooting them with airbursts HE grenades doesn't work out for some reason.

I assert that many games are just hack-n-slash luvfests. Maybe they shouldn't have declassified Special Forces and SEAL teams, because everyone seems to want to play one.

If the GM is approving that level of power, it's roll playing. Some people like that...and many folks get caught up in "terminal stat-itis". Maxing out can be fun, but it gets tiresome.

I generally just try to kill whatever's causing the most damage or is most visibly armed.

Of course, "as obvious as a grenade exploding" can mean "as obvious as any given one of the three or four grenades exploding during this combat turn". You may or may not have LOS to the mage, who may or may not be visible (thanks to cover or Invisibility). I think you might also need to take an action to Observe In Detail, unless he's overcasting so much that the threshold is below 1 ("um, the guy with lightning all over him? I think he's the mage"), and you may not have the opportunity to do that because you're busy trying to suppress an area or whatever.

I already did that to my players.

They hacked and banished it.

And honestly? It's not so easy to make such things as you make it out to be. A hardened combat drone should be considered a highly processed object for the purposes of resisting a possession attempt, which is a threshold, not a dicepool, and it starts at 4+.

I just wish that this was somewhere in the BBB... That covers most issues, what would typical corp security do to detect invisible/improved invisible mages without having an astral force to perceive for them?

Putting a force seven spirit into a roto-drone or fly-spy might take some time, but it can be done. Yes you hit it with banishment, but if it AOE mind controls the mage and anyone in the area (or manabolts them) it's a different playing field. That and spirits will spend edge to prevent being banished. Sure you hit them with one possessed drone it can be handled, but if there are 2-3 and the mage it comes down to trying to stay alive more stomping on it. There is always a counter in SR, but a counter of that magnitude will probably end up wiping the party. One drone can be handled sure. A player bringing even more then two? In the end though a force seven spirit with a drone that has cammo coating means it is at a -11 to see it and moves seven times faster then normal. Heh the other evil thing is even if the spirit gets banished then the anti vehicular rockets come into play.

Keep in mind possessing spirits can't control electronics or computer systems they can only puppet the mechanical systems—which rules out most weapons systems that are wired for electronic commands to be controlled by the drone's Pilot or rigger. So yeah, they'll make the drone move, they'll even make it fly, they can use their own powers through it, but they won't be shooting guns and firing off rockets.

There are several manatech gadgets that help (see Arsenal and Augmentation) - they're expensive but not overpriced. Note that any significant target will have at least one bound spirit (it isn't that expensive) ordered to be on the look out for unauthorized magic use.