It seems to me that a starting mage can take out anyone, especially any other starting character.

It is a numbers game, a mundane or adept attacked by a mage only get their attribute to resist, while a mage has his skill + spell pool.

Most of the time a mage can take out any character without much trouble and still not take drain.

For example a mage with
quickness of 4
intelligence of 5
willpower of 6
Reaction of 4 (9)

Increase reaction sustain focus, force 6 (+5 to reaction)
Improve reflexes + 3 sustain focus, force 1 (+3d6 to initiative)
Mana bolt 5(D)

This mage on average can take out two of the street sams listed in SR3. Why? Because the street sam is a little slower and only has a willpower of 3.
Street Sam's reaction is 11 + 3d6 = 20, where the mage has 9+4d6 = 21, so on average the mage will win.

On take of that if the mage only uses their sorcery of 6 to cast the spell, they will still take out the Sam with ease. This is because the mage will get an average of 4 success and the Street Sam can only ever get 3 success ... it is unlikely that he would even get 1.

On top of this, the mage would take no drain at all if they use 3 dice from their mage pool. 2(D) with 9 dice mean you will get 8 successes ... which will take a Deadly Drain to nothing.

This mage is so powerful that they could take out TWO Street Sams in one action. Imagine the same example above expect add a +2 tn for the mage.

The mage would add 1 from their spell pool to roll 7 dice against the willpower of the Street Sam 3 + 2 = 5. A TN of 5 with 6 dice means that the mage will get about 2 success ... while the street sam still has to get 2 success with 3 dice with a tn of 5 ... very unlikely.

Now the mage rolls for drain, 2(D) with 6 dice from willpower + 2 from spell pool. On average the mage will get 4 which will give the mage a light stun ... they might even take no stun at all.

Now this is just a starting mage. This mage isn't initiated or even using limited spells. This mage would only become stronger where the Street Sam has almost hit their peek.

Heck, another type of mage could be created that only uses combat sense, armor and mana bolt. This mage could soak most of the damage from a Street sam and still survival ... and then blow the sam to bits. Am I missing something here?

Here is my solution ...
My thought is my not add a +1 modifier for ever 2 full essence a character has? This will make it more difficult for the mage to effect the average character, but they still can reduce drain to nothing. On top of that an initiated mage can use centering to reduce the modifier.

Also another thought is that any individual that has a magic rating, but no spell pool uses their magic rating instead of essence for this modifier. This way adepts who are masters of magic within their own bodies can better resist magic.

So for example a adept with willpower of 5, would possess an tn of 8 for any mage who wants to target them with a mana bolt ... assuming the adept's magic rating is 6.

Another version is instead of creating modifiers, you give the victim +1d6 for every point of essence they have to resist.

You some mistakes in your calculations there, but they're not terribly important. The important thing is to remember that the archetypes in the BBB are weak in terms of what you can do with chargen if you want to. Pitting them against a well number-crunched character doesn't really tell us anything.

and in answer to the initial question - yes, spells are hard to resist, especially for mundanes, as long as the force is high enough in most cases, because the results depend on net successes. Against a mundane without spell defense/shielding, they are only going to be rolling up to 6 dice in almost every case. The mage is likely to be rolling 10 dice plus unless its very hard to drain. even at willpower 6 on the target, the mage is likely to get more successes, and the spell works, whatever it is. It IS powerful, that's why so many countries have mega paranoid laws about it (anything over F3 is illegal in the UCAS from spells to foci, and anyone who kills with magic is on an automatic premeditated murder charge), and why everyone geeks the mage first. A single mage, even on the low end of the personal power scale with the right spells can take on ten mundanes easily under the right circumstances. Yeah, magic's tough.

But bear in mind that equally, a single mundane, even on the low end of the same personal power scale can take on 10 mages in the right circumstances, say with a well timed bomb, missile, gas/chemical weapon, taser-based weaponry etc.

It does all balance out. Its just that a starting mage really can kick some ass. But if they don't have their defensive spells up (and there are plenty of reasons why they might not, even apart from the fact they'd get a mile down the road and get mobbed by Lone Star's magical division), mages do tend to be a sitting target. Usually not very hot combat skills, almost certainly comparitively low reactions, fall over if someone sneezes at them at the wrong time of year, you know the drill. If you spend the points improving those areas at character gen, you won't be a terribly hot spellslinger either, unless that's all you do.

Spells are tough to soak. But the system isn't overpowered in that regard at all, imho.

Well, not when compared with SR2, at any rate, because that did get quite silly indeed at times

I am interested in hearing where I made mistakes with my calculations. I think there are only two points where it might look like I made a mistake. The first is the number of successes for the increase reaction. There is a specific reason why it is +5. The other mistake is that +2 is added to the drain test for a second spell. In regards to the other numbers they should be right ... again I am talking about averages. However I don't claim to be perfect.

Now in regards to your comment that any well tweak character can beat the template characters, that actually leads into my point. The example character that I listed, isn't tweaked at all. Clearly there was a lot more thought put into the sam then my example mage.

In any case the underlying question of is magic to hard to resist is still valid ... comments?

Reaver:
Good point, but if the mage is on a run, he would have his focuses activated. And in regards to magic backup, I am strictly concerned about the basic rules for magic. The argument would become overly complicated if you start talking about group configurations.

I am also trying to limit the comparison to starting characters.

spotlite:
You make a really good point, that the role-playing aspect of the game will balance things out. Thinking about it, you are really right ... however how many of us are in games where this is really enforced? On the other hand who cares about that when a npc mage is about to throw a spell at you? Unless your mage is standing, you are toast (if the mage goes first).

Zazen:

Part of the problem is that you're not taking drain into account.

That Increase reflexes 3 is going to have a drain of at least 7D. If you're lucky your mage will only take S stun. It would take a very lucky roll (Or an albino gnome with exception attribute: Willpower) to get it past M. So you've lost at least 2 points of initiative and have +2 to all TNs, putting the Street Sam ahead of you again.

The improve Reaction spell has a drain code of +1D. So, at your force of 6 you're looking at another 4D and you've got a nasty +2 to your resist drain code. Odds are you're mage is flat on his back unconcious when the Street Sam gets there. Even in a lucky case he's probably got at least S stun, has -3 to his initiative, and +3 to TNs which means not only is the Street Sam slightly faster but the mage, trying to see through a blinding headache from all his spells, is going to have trouble casting even the simplest spell while the Street Sam is in great shape and ready to put a half-dozen holes in the Mage with his smartgun.

And, of course, the drain on your first Mana bolt is another 3D. . .

[edit: Oh yes, and if you think a mage can kill any other starting character you haven't seen what happens when a mage goes up against a Drone or Vehicle Rigger. . .[/edit]

the question cooks down to this, does the gm allow the mage to walk around with active spells in broad daylight downtown? if so then yes the mage is overpowerd, if no then no he is not overpowerd. remeber that the astral is a living space, its not void of life. a mage with active foci or spells all the time will sooner or later attract attention from atleast lonsestar (if the spell is above force 3) or magical entitys like spirits...

A mage is only overpowered if the other side doesnt have one. If you are fighting a group that has a mage, that mage can provide spell defense to his fellows (negating your extra dice advantage) and/or send spirits to engage that force 1 focus in astral combat and destroy it in a matter of seconds. Once you lose that focus, your slight speed edge over the sammy is gone, and it becomes much harder to cast spells/resist drain once you start taking damage in a firefight.

The balance issue applies just as much, if not more so, to riggers. Your armored-up combat drone can easily be made all but immune to the sort of damage a beginning runner can dish out, and can be difficult to nearly impossible to affect magically. Put a rigger on the other side, though, and suddenly you have to worry about electronic warfare and opposing drones.

What it comes down to is the fact that any character can be overpowering if the opposition isnt prepared to deal with that character.

Minor nitpick guys, anything over Force 2 is illegal

hell, is it? Wow. That's even harsher than I thought. Oh well, house rule time then for our lot cos they buy F3 foci and stuff specifically for that, and they really won't wanna trade down.

Yeah, I know. I was just correcting the few posters who'd said "above Force 3".

Moonstone Spider

Mardegun, I don't know what went wrong, but get your tags functional.

1. The foci you mention will cause alarms with any ward he passes. Active foci make you easier to spot by an astral searcher. Therefore, your idea doesn't work too well on a sneak and swipe job.

2. Never underestimate how much trouble a bored free spirit or projecting mage can cause. Dispelling foci from the astral at the most entertaining moment...

3. Try those spells in a mana warp. Cyber works at full effect in those.

Finally: Anything can be overpowering if one side matches strength to weakness, and the other matches strength to strength. Surprise wins over high initiative. You can't manabolt what you can't find.

@Moonstone Spider: The Increase Reflexes +3 spell has a drain code of +3D thus the force 1 spell has a drain code of 3D which isn't that hard to resist. Rolling 2 sorcery for casting and 15 for drain gives an 91% chance of resisting the drain completely and an 75% chance of succeding in casting the spell.

The force 1 spell and sustaining focus are also both completely legal. All an assensing lone-star mage would know is that someone is going around with a force 1 sustaining focus. If they are dreck-hot at assensing they may even gather that it's a health spell.

The mage would need a permit for his force 6 sustaining focus and spell, 9.3k total, but apart from that he'd be fine.

Also if you're going to subject mages to random casual assensing, why not do it to everyone? It's as difficult to tell the general location off a character's cyberware as it is to get the most vague impression of a focus's force. Handrazors and Cyberspurs are illegal, with no permits available, and are in fairly distinctive parts of the body. Unless the character had cyberlimbs the cyberweapons would stand-out like a sore thumb. Also consider the other (numerous) types of illegal/permissable implants sammies have in distinctive areas such-as smartlinks (hands pads) and Reaction Enhancers (spinal column).

First of all let me thank you guys for your replays. It is nice to be on forum that is this mature. Also thanks Lilt for noticing my quote problem.

Now in regards to this thread, here are my conclusion so far.

Magic is overpower, but as long as the legality of the magic is enforce it is ok.

While this is valid point it really doesn't answer the original question. All of this talk about a mage noticing another mages focus doesn't answer anything. Is the magic system inherent unbalanced?

Now I also find this kind of statement interesting ...

I have to disagree with you on your interpretation of drain.

You are right, I had the wrong code, as I was looking at decrease initiative 3. However, you sort of glossed over the improve reaction spell. To get that +5 reaction you were talking about you have to have at least 10 successes. It's TN is 4 for an uncybered mage, which means you have to be throwing around 20 dice to get such a bonus normally. Frankly I'm not sure where these die are coming from, the mage in your description should have a spell pool of 5, and at best you've got Sorcery (Spellcasting) 5(7) for a total of 12 die to throw, which will give you an average of 6 successes and +3 to Reaction. It would take a near-miracle roll to pull off 10 successes with only 12 die and a TN of 4.

And of course, the fact that you've put everything into casting the spell means you've got nothing to add to your drain resistance test, which means you're throwing your willpower of 6, not the 15 die you were trying for increase initiative. With 6 die you can get an average of 3 successes, which means serious stun wound time, M if you're very lucky. Even in the most perfect imaginable situation in which every single die is a success you've taken a light wound, which costs you yet another point of intiative and adds to your TNs.

So the mages true Initiative will likely be 7 + 4d6 -3 for drain, giving us a true average initiative of 18 vs. the Street Samurai's 21.5, and a TN modifier that will make it nearly impossible to hurt him with magic. Drain doesn't go away without rest, and I don't know about your games but in ours we don't let mages sustain spells in their sleep.

I simply disagree that magic is overpowered. Sure, its *powerful*. So is a smartlink-2'ed Ingram valiant mounted on a max-gyro 7 and loaded with EX rounds. So is a dikoted combat axe wielded competently by a troll adept. So is a steel lynx drone. While it is true that every character has some defense against these things, that defense in many cases doesnt mean much. Your mage marching into combat with any one of those things will probably die unless he wins initiative, and his best chance to survive an encounter with the drone is to run away.

Furthremore, youre mage has to worry about drain, background count, wards, and the fact that if he is identified as a caster he becomes the primary target of any reasonably intelligent opposing force. Even if you usually succeed at the generally low drain TN's, a single botched roll can ruin your character's effectiveness for the course of an entire run. The very act of being in combat and/or casting high-force spells can generate a background count, which hampers your effectiveness. Other characters dont have those worries. If you're in a game where those concerns are overlooked, I can see how mages might seem overpowered.

And yeah, failing to take into account the illegality of your typical running mage's spells is just as bad as allowing the sammie to waltz down the street with that ingram valiant without problem. Your spells will all leave your astral signiature in an area, so, unless you can spend a long time trying to erase that signiature, or you have cleansing metamagic, anything you do magically can be astrally tracked back to you. Thats a pretty hefty liability, if you ask me.

There is no need to be insulting Scamp.

The title of the thread is "Is magic to hard to resist?" So enforcing legality restriction does NOT answer the question. Besides if you would have read any of my responses, you would have read that I acknowledge the validity of this point.

It seems to me that you have got completely focused on the lvl 6 sustaining focus. Take that focus out of the picture and the point is still there. Besides why couldn't the mage have a day job where a lvl 6 health spell would be legal? The mage could be a doctor or any other profession where reaction is important. Do you really think that this law wouldn't have exceptions? Besides there are different laws for different places.

On top of that this top isn't solely meant for PCs. A NPC doesn't nescassly follow the same rules, as a PC. Are you going ask your GM how an NPC bypassed LS, because they have a 2+ force focus?

I am not trying to prove myself right and everyone wrong; that isn't the point. I just wanted to see what other people's options are about the magic system.

I thought people would agree that it seems unfair that riggers, street sam and every other mundane have no defense against magic. Nor can they develop a defense without the help of another mage. The only defense that an adept has is a power, which isn't all that useful for what it costs.

Everyone one else no matter how deadly they are follow the same rules. Targets of mundane attacks can dodge and soak damage. Armor can make a huge different ... there are no such things for mage attacks. Heck mages don't even have the same modifiers as mundanes. The only mundane modifier that comes to mind are visibility modifiers.

For example mages can be sprinting and still cast spells, with no modifiers ... or did I miss where this? What modifiers do mages have?

It seems that everyone is cool with the rules and I appreciate people's explanations.

Just to go ahead and directly answer the question posed by the thread title, and summarize my views:

Is magic hard to resist? Yes - if you aren't a mage and don't have a friendly mage providing spell defense.

Is magic *too* hard to resist? No - there are enough tradeoffs and difficulties associated with being a spellcaster as to effectively balance out the power level of magic users with the other archetypes. One example (of many) is that your sammie doesnt have to reserve combat pool dice to make sure he doesnt cause himself stun damage when firing an assault rifle.

They paid good BPs for that magical ability too. So your point? If magic wasn't so bad assed, maybe the BP would be 20 or even just 10.

Again thanks everyone for your responses.

Moonstone Spider
As I mentioned before I really didn't want to get into the details of why the mage would have 5 success on the increased reaction. To be honest this spell isn't that important, because instead of a spell the mage could have cyberware and or bioware to increase their reaction instead. The reason I didn't want to include cyberware is that I didn't want to over complicate the example.

In regards to how a person could get 10 successes with 12 dice with a tn of 4, it isn't impossible ... very difficult yes.

In short the rules (pg. 191 SR3) allow a mage effectively "recast" a spell into a focus if they chose to. This means that a mage could recast the spell until they have achieved a higher than average roll. Yes this means that a mage would spent most of the day recovering, but it is reasonable to allow this before a run. There is a good chance they won't get 10 success, but it is possible.

Maybe this is taking advantage of the rules, or is it? Maybe I answered my own question ... sure let a mage do this, but he just wasted a day to do it. On top of that if they get caught with the focus they are in trouble.

Jason Farlander

Not in the "sammy vs mage" standoff. And not when he's firing at an unaware target. In sammy vs sammy, sure, but, then again, in "mage vs mage" both mages have to reserve dice for spell resistance AND drain resistance. Even if the target is unaware of the attack the mage must often reserve drain resistance dice.

Anyway, as I said, its just one balancing factor of many.

Disclaimer- didnt wanna read the whole thread after the first few posts, so if it was covered already ignore.

No, magic isnt really hard to resist. The key to having it bounce off you like raindrops off your roof is understanding how the d6 system's statistics work.

Willpower 5 and 6 seem close, but a magician will get twice as many 5s as 6s assuming an even distribution on dice rolls for example.

All you need to do is to understand that doing things like getting willpower 6 on your sam (or whatever stat on whatever guy you need for resisting) and all of a sudden its a moot point.

Sorcery 6, Spellpool 6, focus/spirit dice 6 = 18 dice.
Roll against tn 6, get 3 successes.
Opponent resists, youre left with only 1 or 2, even if the spell was force 6

And thats if they dont need to use any dice to resist drain. Plus karma pool of course, which could swing it a bit either way, but there you go. Point being that, like shooting, its really dangerous without armor. Against spells, your armor is your stats.

NO

The problem i see is, that the d6 makes it sometimes to hard to resist and sometimes to easy to resist... especially because force or Sorcery are more important:

Examples:

Stunbolt 6 against WIL 3 opponent ==> too easy
Stunbolt 6 against WIL 6 opponent ==> hard

Detect Enemy 6 against WIL3 ==> 1-3 successes ==> no good informations
Detect Enemy 6 against WIL6 ==> 0-1 successes ==> useless?

Clout 1 against KON3, CP 3 ==> too easy, go for D-Drain, get 3 successes use SP for Drainresistance
Clout 1 against KON6, CP6 ==> 6 successes + D, opponent will have 12 successes ==> L-Wound for him, you take 2D-Drain ending with M stun.

All spells with a threshold are only limeted useful. How will you get 3 successes against an WIL6/KON6 opponent? But 1 success vs. WIL3 opponent is too easy...
(Control Manipulation). Too get those successes its easier to go with Low-Force and use SP for casting then drain...

Rember that visual modifiers (cover, lighting, movement) effect magical targeting just as much as shooting someone. A Starting Sam with a smartlink can shoot someone standing in the open at TN 2 with 12+ dice. The real probelm with spells is that targets in a 'tactical' situation almost never stand still in the open. If they do, they are probably too stupid to live anyway.

So our willpowe 3 security guard is in partial cover (+4) making the mages target number 7, assuming that he is putting 12 dice behind the spell this gives him two successes, the guard is probably toast, but the mage is very good at blasting things (Sorcery 6+, what did you expect). The modifiers quickly add up, this is why stricking from ambush/surprise is so important in SR, the targets will not have a lot of modifiers.

I agree with Jason. Magic is powerful, but you can also make umpteen mundane characters capable of one-shot takedowns. Shadowrun is a very lethal game. A mage who pumps all of his dice into a spell, or a sammie who fires full-auto with all of his combat pool, or a troll adept with improved ability wielding a dikoted polearm with +3 Reach can all take someone down in one shot. That's how it works.

But you don't always want to blow all your dice on an all-or-nothing shot. Mages in Shadowrun have to worry about splitting their dice between three things: spellcasting, spell defense, and resisting Drain. If mages are blowing your NPCs away, start having NPCs come in waves, so that they can see that Drain is a bad thing, and that it's better to stay fresh for the next group of opponents. And have enemy spellcasters be equally ruthless against the party, so that they realize they need to help protect their teammates against hostile magic with spell defense. If a mage is able to use all of their dice, instead of splitting it three ways, is it any wonder if they are a bit overpowering? It's the same way if a sammie never runs into anyone with heavy weapons or a decent initiative, and can just blow all of his Combat Pool on his first attack.

By the way - you mentioned adepts, and why they couldn't be more magic resistant. Well, adepts have several powers that specifically allow them to resist either certain categories of spells, or magic in general. Combine that with a high Body and Willpower, and they can shrug off an awful lot of magic.

Over a year ago one of my players kept whining for months about how mages where overpowered and that I should create some house rules to make them less powerful. He thought that them being so powerful detroyed the game.

Wlll finally I got him to play a mage. It lasted for one session and then he said that mages sucked. Bug time. And he wanted to go back to playing a sammie.

Damn, sorry I missed out on this one....

Didn't read it all, that'd take hours and I don't have the time, but thought I'd point out a few things.

One person complained about running around with Sustained spells. There's nothing at all against that if you have a permit. Hell, might as well just lose the Tattoo'ing and Quickening meta techs in your game if you're gonna have a problem with that. Spells are more legal than any heavy weapon, and even more legal than most guns. People compare the sustained-spell to walking around with an Assault Canon, cept you can't even get a permit for that, so it's not comparable.

As for the original post, spells are hard to resist for a regular, but no more so than a gun shot (9M w/ a smartlink can take out anyone). But, truth be told, my Shaman carries a gun and rarely uses his 1 combat spell. Unless it's a Force 6 spell, it has a good chance of bouncing in a game where the GM knows about Shielding and lets the NPCs use it (like in our games).

Secondly, the 10 successes needed for a TN 4 on that Reaction spell isn't all that incredibly likely (specially on this non-tweaked version of a mage), most mages are slower, and MOST mages reserve their foci for Armour and Invis type spells (and Reflexes of course) if they use Sustaining, not Reaction. Limited to Magic x2 in Foci force and even more magi tend to reserve those for other Foci (Power, Spell Category, etc).

The example may not have been tweaked, but was very specialized, as such, it's actually balanced IMHO, because of the sacrifices in other areas. He's all about Speed and a firearm. I wouldn't punish him for it anymore than I'd punish a speed-demon (Synaptic Acc 2, Boosted 3, Reaction Enhancers and max starting Quick/Int with Muscle Toners). If you're all about getting the first shot, then getting the first shot isn't bad.

Lastly, as was pointed out, this non-tweaked version goes to sleep after casting that spell.

Sphynx

You got today mixed up with 2063 there Scamp. Look in the pictures that come with the game, people running around with these items are common, and sure, if you look questionable LS may stop you, but since only about 1 in 100 of LS are going to be magically active, and most of those are going to be in HTR groups, not running the beat, chances are good that even in a world where cops are alot more stringent than in the SR universe, they won't be stopping you for a spell.

Astral signatures can definitely be a problem, agreed. And since you can't cleanse until AFTER the source of the spell is gone, you can't even cleanse your own spells from an area if they're quickened. Even then though, so the person will recognize the aura if they see it again, there's no way to store auras on a computer database for other people to see, and people just aren't gonna go deep-investigating every aura in an area the size of Seattle for a match unless some really major stuff happened that deemed such an expenditure worth it.

Sphynx

I may be wrong on this but doesn't the rating of an object power foci 1 vs power foci 10 have different magnitudes of power visable? In all the SR2 games I played the more powerful a foci was the more light it gave off on the astral, unless it was masked of course.

The same goes for characters right? A unmasked Grade 10 Initiate will outshine a fresh power 6 begining character.