I saw a post on a fellow GM's concern on mages from earlier, and it reminded me of a potential problem in my new Shadowrun campaign. The mage in my campaign has Stunbolt. While we haven't experienced a situation in game where he would use it, he decided to give me a demonstration as to it's effectiveness.

With a Magic of 6, he can Overcast at Force 12. That's an average of 4 hits, so he's hitting people for 16 Stun damage and only attempting to resist Drain 5, which he resists with 12 dice (Stats + Fetish). Throw Edge into that and he's rolling 16 dice, and re-rolling the 6s.

So, he's going to be running around, flinging Force 8 -12 Stunbolts, which will completely rock any mook that doesn't have a mage backing him up. This strikes me as game breaking. The benefits greatly outweigh the negatives, since he's trading a downed opponent for 1 - 2P Damage (if that).

Is there something I'm missing for Stunbolt? It seems to be the ultimate combat spell. Why would you cast anything else?

first answer that comes to mind? more than one bad guy at a time.
also, overcasting is great, until you start taking damage, then you might regret that extra point of self inflicted physical damage. From a different angle, you need to do more with magic than drop bad guys, sneaking, finding, probing, healing, etc. I mean, if you want to talk broken, I'd look at the spirits he could be summoning instead of casting that stunbolt.

Meh, if you are really worried about it start using the rules for increasing drain of all Direct Mana spells. Tis a pity that the devs lost their balls and made it an optional rule after it was primary.


And if you don't like that idea remember that everytime a Mage throws around a magical tacnuke he is going to make waves and a huge Astral Fingerprint.

Drones? Counterspelling mages? Wards, background counts, hostile spirits?

Everything looks broken before you see it in game. From looking over the rules I used to think the 3.5 monk was the ulitmate fighting char, then I saw how they play out over the levels and saw how they were balanced. I could give numerous examples, anyway he can only take out one appoinent at a time, and he dose take some phyiscial regardless if he dares overcast.
Not to say its overpowerfull, but it has its limits, escepicaly against other mages. Mages are supposed to be powerfull enough to nock out a securty guards with the wave of a hand, nock a roto-drone out of the sky with a lightning bolts, summon powerful earth spirts to crush down gates and wreack havack in a care chace with a force spirt.
I'm not saying the game breaking but they are a force to be reckond with, they may not have the "reality changeing" teleporting, and otherwise uber hokus-pokus of the D&D mage but they make up for it in raw kickass power. Nature of the beast.
That said, theirs plenty of ways to counter this, a big force of low level securty douchs, another mage, a spirt, and of course drones. Even though you have ways of counter it allow him the chance to flaunt his stunball, just make sure that if he weakens himself disableling people left and right he'll get his arse pummled by the dobermen drones that were along with the guards.
Drek, now I'm all inspired to roll up a combat mage.

Tying in with much of what has already been offered above as challenges to the mage's supremacy, he can't use EDG forever, so his 'running around' will end pretty quickly. Once he starts failing to cover the Drain, he will settle down very quickly. You can't heal Drain with Magic, and many GMs won't allow First Aid to help either. And even with enough dice to give the required hits 'on average', all you need is one bad roll in there to hurt like hell and take days of complete rest to heal. Spellcasting or Summoning at the limit of a character's ability will always get him, sooner or later.

So let him have his fun. You will eventually have yours.

Quoted for Truth

Keep the Faith

Evidently your mage hasn't discovered the wonderful world of Spirit Swarm. If you think you've got it bad now...

Anyhow, an uber stunbolt isn't anything to be worried about. Dropping one guy a pass is "meh" at best. If he's sporting a sustain focus with Increased Reflexes then he's more powerful, but still, I've seen mediocre sammies dropping baddies left and right. Grenades rock.

Against mil-spec armor the mage will fare better than the sammy but how a mage is surviving on a battlefield with milspec warriors is beyond me. Remember, mages are feared on the battlefield and Shadowrun doesn't run by the aggro system. Sec personnel will always pop the spellslinger first cause no one like being mind controlled or turned to goo.

Well, if they can spot the mage he's dead first. That's a whole other issue being discussed in two current threads hehe.

Stunball's where it's at you know. Force 7 to be exact. That's 4 Drain, quite manageable with many starting characters with 10 Drain dice, 12 with a fetish. You can expect to on average roll that off. And it's only a few net hits makes it a one-shotter too. It's not too difficult and you can take out groups of corpsec.

Note: Make bad things happen to their fetishes.

The question is: why are they only fighting corpsec? Drones are cheaper, far more reliable (excluding hackers), and aren't prone to mental manipulation or mana illusions.

Word. Mawynn brings up a great point that I didn't quite get till it was pointed out to me.

Apart from that, the mage just spend a full action phase to down a single regular guard with no magical backup. A streetsam with an automatic weapon downed at least 2 guards in the same time, possibly more, depending on how twinked up he is.
And he didn't take any drain or needed to use any Edge, either.
Yes, stunbolt is really good. Better than a firearm for a mage, even, because he'll never get the DP needed to really shine with those. But it doesn't make regular weapons obsolete.
Professional PCs are a lot stronger than regular guards. All of them. Even the hacker most likely could've downed someone in an action phase.

No, it is that powerful.

Which is one reason why I consider the Drain for overcasting too low (see my first post and some discussion about it below, here).




The 'problem' (some see it as one, some don't) is not regular guards. The 'problem' is, that this drops anything that is not immune to stun damage (maybe Great Dragons, high Force spirits and Initiates have a reasonable chance of defending... you don't even need to go that high, F9 is usually plenty enough; DV3). Such power should have consequences. Weapons have consequences, at least those powerful enough to do similar damage. You cannot simply carry them around where you want to.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. Force does not give you dice to roll, BTW, you roll Spellcasting + Magic. Force limits the number of hits you can achieve (and sets the base damage for direct combat spells).

Could you (or anyone else who knows) tell me where this is written? I was looking for it recently, and couldn't find it, so I'm unsure, whether this is actually the case or a holdover from earlier editions. Thanks!

Bye
Thanee

P. 178, SR4A, last line under Drain.

Thank you.

Bye
Thanee

As was previously mentioned, Edge doesn't last forever. Said mage would be better off with a little bit of cyberware and focusing it on the wound management stuff. Trauma Damper is great for that as you can shunt a point from P > S and one from S > nothing.

If you are going for overpowered twinkery, it needs to be done right.

Stunbolt isn't the end-all be-all of spellcasting. Part of that is the GM's fault. When all you provide is nails, it's not illogical to find your players are bringing hammers. When you give opposition that Stunbolt is useless (or even not very effective) against, you'll find that overcasting direct combat spells isn't always a good idea. Oft times, it'll be the worst possible choice.

Just because a mage can doesn't mean he should.