Everyone knows that direct damage spells are a huge, huge broken piece of game design. So i am wondering about the other effects of Indirect Elemental Spells, which suck.

Would the Lightning Bolt spels and similar affect Cyberwear? Because it is cited that indirect spells cause secundary effects (Acid spells can destroy armor, fire spells make ammo explode, etc).

cyberware is treated as a part of the person's body, not as a machine, in pretty much every instance. so i'm going to have to say no.

Broken compared to a Street Sam burst firing Stick-n-Shock twice per Pass with a pool of about 20 dice?

No. Direct Damage spells are competitive, Indirect Elemental spells are piss poor.

An interesting idea to buff Indirect Spells I've seen posted (not sure how workable) is not to cap their successes by Force.

From what I remember lightning doesn't have an effect on cyber in 4th ed. I seem to remember something about lightning affecting cyber in previous editions, however. Don't underestimate indirect elemental effects though; they just require you to think creatively. Like,say, shooting with capsule rounds full of accelrant and THEN casting fireball

Electrical damage (which lightning bolt is) DOES cause the target to make a shock resistance check, so yes. But not in the way the OP is thinking.

I think one should only have the cyber be effected specially by a lightning spell if the spell target glitched on the resistance test or something.

I would like to agree but amend this to include "..or if the cyber is somehow comprimised/worn out/out of date/etc." Characters who buy the cheapest gear should sometimes feel the bite of it, especially if you have someone in your group who is steadfast in only buying the best and most reliable over the flashy SOTA or the cheap.

Quoted for Truth.

This is why you shouldn´t use electricity as an elemental effect. The only good thing about it, is that you can cast it underwarter and single target spells become area-effect (hope this is still so, it was like this in previous editions). Otherwise it is crap, the secondary effect is simply too weak.

I was thinking about a nice secundary effect to Lightning bolt spell to make it more useful (even because, hell, it does STUN damage!), that it would kill wireless connections to the target, even if it is properly evaded by a a REF test for the rest of the Combat Turn. It would make it very useful against drones and vehicles that do not suffer stun damage. What you guys think?

I agree with everything that makes a spell that causes (F/2)+3 drain usefull. Even in 2070 fuel is explosive and electricity for servomotors is transported by cables, making future-hardware resistant against electricity is ridicculus. Maybe somebody can explain how this is justified. And don´t tell me every little shit bought in a hardware store round the corner is screened agains electricity. They don´t protect it against other stuff, so why against that? Wouldn´t pay off.

Being hit by a lighting bolt is similar to an EMP effect. Any non-hardened electric equipment would break. A comlink would not function again until at least its battery or whatever it is that gives them power was replaced.
It would be wise that any cyber should be hardened to prevent more invasive surgery to repair the cyber.

Isn't cyberware powered by bioelectricity or something like that? Wouldn't that mean it would be affected by electric attacks just like an arm would? Also, the Lightning Bolt Spell does physical damage (that's what the "P" next to damage in the spell description means and why lightning bolt has the same drain value as any other indirect combat spell) so drones both take damage from the spell and have to make the check to not be disabled, making lightning bolt the best anti-drone option IMHO.

I think anyone hit by lightning/shocks of any kind should convulse, potentially biting through their tongue, shooting themselves/their friends, or dislocating their own shoulders, but that's just the sadist in me.

A lot of elemental magic effects are up to GM fiat, so I'd certainly encourage creative use by players. A heavily cybered player or NPC may eat a penalty for any cyberware-related tests until the body can normalize its' bioelectric field. I also like the wireless shutdown idea, but only as a result of particularly good rolls, or a botched resistance test.. otherwise, it would probably de-value jamming spells.

Well, actually they're quite defined, in the core book and street magic. You can always add effects as a GM, but I wouldn't. You don't need to punish people with cyberware; it's got enough drawbacks compared to bioware as is (high Essence cost, shows up on scanners a lot more than bioware, harsher availability for the good stuff).

Shadowrun doesn't really use damage done to specific body parts; you don't usually have to worry about a random hit damaging part of your cyberware or puncturing a bioware organ, breaking a leg or gouging out an eye. Immolation doesn't destroy skin enhancements either.

Sure, some of that might make sense, but it's a level of detail that would slow down the game to a crawl. And it's harsher than really needed; people are fragile enough as-is. Being incapacitated by the electricity is bad enough, without also frying your cyberware.

I've read that, but it's impossible. The human body doesn't generate enough electricity to light an LED, let alone power a motor capable of lifting an arm.

Cyberware is certainly electrically powered, but it isn't going to draw on bioelectricity.



That's a good way to look at it: lightning does damage to cyberware just like anything else.



Reasonable.

OK. I'll bite.
What ARE the best direct damage elemental secondary effects?

Since when is either stunning someone for several combat turns or at least imposing a -2 on all of the targets actions weak?

I personally think most of the elemental effects have a place.

On topic, i wouldn't let a lightning bolt fry a cyberarm, though possibly some of the internal electronics that a character might have
packed into it (commlink comes to mind).

Of course they have their place...mainly for the fluff and always depending that you have the right GM. Secondary damage is definitely something that lives and dies with GM fiat. I remember very good the corresponding rules in SR2 where they tried to rulify if and when secondary effects apply. Meanwhile they tried to better it, but acc. to the list of elementary effects, these secondary effects "can" occur, they don´t have to and most of the time they simply don´t occur because the target numbers you have to roll are low or the dice pool of the enemy is too high. So here we are back at GM fiat.

But now let us go back to your and TeaTime´s questions. I will try to answer them both in one summary if this is ok for you:

Electrical Damage:

good:
- causes damage
- can (depending on the spell-version) stun the target
- can "stun" drones and electronic equipment

bad:
- armor helps
- nonconductivity upgrade is common and available
- body and willpower (3) test is relatively easy to make
- (-2) to the defenders dice pool after absorbing (F/2)+3 or +5 (if you used the area-version) drain is what i would call a "bad deal"
- acc. to the descriptions most of the items are hardened against electrical damage and likely to be affected

Now that this is cleared, we take a look to another effect. I admit that most of the elemental effects suck, but we can do better than E-damage.

Take a look:

Fire damage

good:
- causes damage
- can set flamable things on fire (check you char. and think about all the flammable stuff you carry along. Hair, facemask, clothes, ammunition, grenades etc. Basically you are a feast for every fire-spirit)
- if you go in flames, you get continuous damage and besides the rules, i think someone who is burning does nothing else than trying to get the flames out. So while the enemy in example 1 gets -2 to his dice-pool for some actions, THIS guy here does definitely NOTHING to you until he is extinguished....or dead.

bad:
- can set also things on fire you don´t want to damage like e.g. the floor you are standing on or so.^^

So IMHO fire is definitely better than lightning but this is besides the mentioned arguments mostly a style option. they both do damage... everything else is for powergaming and maxing the effectivity.

But now let´s have a look at the other versions of elemental effects. Because of the mass, only ultra-short:

- acid: useless as spell, acid vanishes to quick
- cold: no usefull side-effect except you target water-spirits, squatter with low attributes or drunk riggers that are asleep.
- metal: full armor counts PLUS +5 because of the flechette-effect. What a crap.
- light: bullsh**t, everybody should have flare-protection, secondary effect extremely GM fiat.
- blast: even when he is knocked down, he can shoot at you. Most of the time you will blast him behind cover.
- sand: which equipment isn´t sealed against a 1 second blast of sand? Even nowadays most of the weapons can handle this, and a good old AK is laughing at you.
- smoke: great that no armor applies but due to smog etc. everybody is equipped with air-filters and gas masks makes you completely immune to this shit. Better you shoot yourself before you try to cast this massive drain on somebody.
- water: see blast

These ones are handled, but now i have something that is very...let me say....two-edged.

- sound: no armor, even IF you have dampers you only gain 2 dices, the chance of being under a silence spell is equal to zero and even if this happens, you don´t really get much dice (force-limit). Additional this thing causes nausea which is the super-version of the stunning effect of electrical damage. Check the entry in the book. So this thing can do SERIOUS damage with little chance of escaping. BUT there is a big drawback. This stuff is LOUD. So no more hiding, only usefull if the shit already hit the fan.

That was just my 2 cents. I hope i could help.

The ones that are most fun.

I'd have to disagree on a few of your points here. I definetly think electric damage is superior to fire damage. Considering we're talking spell effects here, electric is just as capable of doing physical damage as fire, after all, it's not real electricity or fire, just magic made to look and act like it. Also, fire doesn't even have that great a chance of lighting things on fire. Just like acid, the actual magical fire only appears for an instant, meaning that if anything does catch fire, it'd have to do so from sheer heat in an instant of flame.

I also would say that water/blast aren't entirely useless. Especially for melee users, knocking someone down gives decent attack bonuses. In addition, if you look at the knockdown rules, once the DV of an attack has gone above 10, the target is always knocked down, regardless of body. So literally any target is going to be bowled over by a force 10 blast attack, from mice to great dragons, and I can't imagine that aerial targets would be able to handle knockdown well.

I agree with you that sand, frost, and metal are crap, and sound is definetly superior to all other elements except for the purposes of stealth, sometimes though, the awesomeness of a wall of electric charged metal shards spinning in a wall around you is just too cool to pass up

Cyberware in shadowrun uses optics, not wires. I don't know how, but there you go, cyberware is no longer vulnerable to EMP/electricity attacks. For reasons unknown, vehicles however are still vulnerable, so lightning for vehicles, fire for people.

If you want to make electricity more powerful, why not include a possibility for it causing cardiac arrest or mental issues, like real lightning does?

Yeah.^^

@Patrick the gnome: I disagree that E-damage is superior to fire, but this is something we could discuss for years. You are always invited to one of our sessions for further details on that.^^

And the one drawback of Sound Elemental attacks is that they're Stun, not Physical. So no effect on drones, vehicles, barriers, etc.

It's 10 damage after damage resistance roll.

Acutally you could negate this at spell creation. E-damage is acc. to the description also stun damage but the spell deals physical damage. So this shouldn´t be a problem.

No, mundane electrical damage from tazers and stun batons is stun. The magical electrical attack is much more powerful and therefore get bumped up to Physical. Mundane sonic attacks (shouting, loud noises) don't do any damage at all, but the magical variety are much more intense and therefore get bumped up to stun.

Magical electric damage is specifically listed as physical, just as magical sonic damage is specifically listed as stun for balance reasons. Any home-made spells would require GM approval and if you tried to pass off a sound elemental spell that bypassed armor and did physical damage it would be perfectly canon to say 'No'.

I think the Lightning Bolt spell is physical, because mundane lightning damage would also be physical. You could probably make a Taser Bolt spell though, that did stun damage. Probably for a friendlier drain, too.

I certainly agree that you should be able to make a tazer bolt spell for less drain. And you should be able to make a physical sound spell too - I'd just assign much higher drain for it. It's hard for me to imagine how intense a noise (not blast wave but just pure sound waves) would need to be to kill a guy, or to punch through a barrier.

On some level stun and physical in the real world is just a matter of semantics. A lightning bolt is just a taser bolt with the power so high that the stun damage overflows into the physical track.

Volts Jolt, Amps Vamp.

Tazers use high voltage, very low amperage electric shocks, a lightning bolt (real, mundane, from the sky) OTOH is extremely high amperage (and voltage). The spell moves to mimic the later rather than the former.

References:
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...18063917AAeTZxb
http://www.slate.com/id/2154253/
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qi...02021746AApnvbr
http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_volts_o...tning_bolt_have

Sorry, but 100% disagree. Acc. to the specification (SR4, page 154) electrical damage is stun. Elemental effects rely on this specifications but nevertheless the corresponding spells do physical damage. So also the sound-attack could be chosen to do physical damage. That magical attacks differ from the description is just an assumption from you, not an verified declaration. On page 136 of Street magic, the drain modifier table gives you an explicit choice between stun and physical damage. So every combat-spell with elemental effect can definitely do physical damage (actually it says that the elemental effect has to deal physical damage, too)

Besides that, also mundane noise can do physical damage and affect inanimated objects. Street magic (page 156) says and we all know that vibrations are definitely capable of damaging inanimate structures (e.g. bridges that shouldn´t be passed in lock-step by bigger military units, collapse of buildings through vibrations caused by earthquakes etc. Also people have died because intense vibrations caused heartfailures through influencing the hearbeats)

I think that one is only "plausible" rather than "proven."

In 1850, 730 french soldiers passed the hanging-bridge in Angers and caused a collapse due to the resonances caused by their lock-step. At least this happening is approved. Check (the german) wikipedia with the key-word "resonance catastophe". Unfortunately i didn´t find an english version at the go.

The fact that the lightning elemental attack IS different from the description is a validation of the distinction between the two.

Also, if you're going to use harmonic resonance as the justification for sound doing physical damage, you would have to have separate spells targetted to each target. The resonant frequency of sounds that will shatter glass is not the same as what would effect steel, etc.

Not really, it is just a verification of the drain-modifier table that lets you choose which kind of damage you want to do.

This is where magic comes in. You choose the target and everything elso is done. But it leaves a good way to create limited-target-versions of the spell like the limited versions of acid stream are "corrode/melt/sludge (object)".

They mentioned that when they did the episode of Mythbusteres, the bridge may have collapsed due to surpassing its weight limit. You'd kinda notice the "resonance cascade" as it builds, it gets really really hard to keep walking when the bridge is swaying that much.

Yeah, but we are talking about possibility, not likelihoods.

Well, a clear note of correct frequency and volume can shatter glass, so physical sonic damage has a basis in reality.

And it can also destroy your eardrums or cause neuronal damage, which both look VERY MUCH like physical damage to me.

Lots of things that qualify as stun damage in the SR rules can shatter glass. A slap can break glass. That doesn't mean that a slap should do physical damage in SR.

There's no reason that you can't make a magical spell that does sound damage, and even in extreme situations does physical damage. But the GM doesn't have to agree that it should only be one point of drain higher than the stun version.

Right now the sound elem spell already breaks the generic rules by bypassing armor, which makes it pretty uber compared to the other elem spells. The only thing that balances this out is that it's stun only. Normally mages don't use elem spells on live critters because direct damage spells are more efficient and also ignore armor. So having this elem spell ignore armor (but only on living things that can be stunned) is no big deal. Making an elemental spell that did physical damage (and therefore could effect vehicles, drones, etc.) and didn't require direct line of sight (as an indirect spell), and ignored armor...would be a big deal and should have suitably atrocious drain.

I'm not exactly sure what you're saying here, but if you're disagreeing with Patrick's statement, you're wrong. The spell's Force is added to the damage inflicted, so to reach the threshold of 10 (to knock down any target) the spell needs to deal 0 or more damage.

10 Boxes != 10 DV

Force of the spell => DV

Edit:

Oh, I see what you're saying. DV + Force = Knockdown test.

I would say that sound element effects could do physical damage with a custom spell, just based on the fact that it's magic. I mean, when you're hit with a magic fireball, it isn't real fire, it's mana that's being manipulated by the magician to look and act like real fire, but after the spell ends the fire dissapears. It's the magician's will that takes the fire and causes it to produce heat and deal physical damage. It's the same thing as with sound spells. The spell doesn't create real sound, it manipulates mana to sound and act like sound waves, but when the spell ends the sound dissapears. Therefore, if the magician wills the spell to deal physical damage and act like sound, the actual physics don't matter. It's magic, it doesn't have to conform to the mundane world's rules. However, this is all my highly subjective opinion, so take it for what you will.

1) Smoke elemental effect also bypasses armor. The only difference to sound is, that there ARE ways to get protected, while against sound there are no common ways to do so.

2) The RAW already cover the fact that physical damage should have higher drain, so no extra-drain-modifier from the GM.