Agreed. I think most groups are 50% or higher in awakened concentration. If this doesn't constitute some kind of nod to the 'magic is overpowered' group, I don't really know what you want.

One thing to consider is that SR3 stats are NOT on the same scale as SR4 stats.

The conversion was that a SR3 Stat at 6 is a SR4 Stat at 4. So if you are comparing 6 vs 6, of course the SR4 character will come out ahead.

Actually I would say about 20%-50%. Every group should have at least one mage but Adepts are optional almost everything they can do there is an aug for it.

It's not like that was unusual in SR1-3, either, though.

It was a little less likely due to the niche protection on the Decker and the Rigger. Groups that skipped Deckers had higher percentages of all other archetypes and both the Hacker and the Rigger can be easily covered under other archetypes in SR4 (cheaper decks/programs and the VCR nerf).

@Darthmord: You are correct that that is the correct way to convert them. I was unaware of that. However, I think that the comparison still stands since both are easily achievable in character generation. It costs 40% of your budget in SR3 to be a mage with Magic 6 and it takes 23% to be a Magic 6 Full mage with 4 spells (roughly 25 spell points) in SR4. An SR4 mage is far more likely to have Dice Pool additions from Foci at character creation which should more than make up for any differences (which cost allocation but you still have 68 BPs left before you catch up to resources allocation).

Yes, but "It has always been a problem" is not "There is no problem."

I admit a number around 20% is a bare minimum because every group needs at least one mage (See that, they need a mage, no question or discussion there), but I think the numbers I've seen on average are easily 50%+ awakened. I don't think this is a simple 'well, there are only two choices, awakened and mundane' case either, I think it is the fact, maybe not just that awakened are more powerful than mundane, but more versatile as well.

After all, it just takes a single spell (Stunball/bolt) or two (The other one) to make your mage a combat monster. After that your other 10 spells can go to basically anything you want. Could be stealth with invisibility and silence and such. Could be control with manipulation spells. Could be utility with things like levitation and magic fingers. Could be recon with clairvoyance. Could be buffing with increase spells and things like eyes of the pack. Could be medic with heal. Heck, given 10 spells, you could be all of these at once. 2 combat spells, mob control, levitation, eyes of the pack, clairvoyance, clairvoyance, improved invisibility, silence, improve reflexes, improve [stat], heal. Bam, you have a combat/medic/scout/infiltrator/manipulator/utility/buff mage. Good luck trying to cram all that into a mundane. The mage really doesn't even suffer slightly from spreading out so much, because all spells are cast with Magic + spellcasting, regardless of what type they are. About the only place you run into trouble is you can only raise one set with spec, and one or two sets with mentor, and each set would require its own spellcasting foci. But still, 12 dice or so is plenty to handle most tests, and for those few that it isn't (Healing and improved invisibility come to mind), you just focus your bonuses there.

I don't really understand why every PC isn't a mage or a mystical adept. Counterspelling alone....

I'd guess more from convention than anything. (almost) No one plays an awakened hacker, not because they are ineffective, but because it just feels weird.

As a GM, I now routinely offer an extra 50 to 100K for mundanes character creation.

And even a minimal Background Count reduces your effectiveness significantly. Ideal situation? Sure, the mage can do many things well. Awakened characters rely on magic significantly, anything that reduces magic affects quite adversely.

A mundane can be combat, medic, scout, infiltrator, manipulator and utility simply with skillwires. Put skillwires into an Awakened and you have to weigh the pros and cons very carefully indeed.

My Mundane Character Builds far outweigh my Awakened Character builds...

Out of 40 Characters, only 6 are awakened...

Keep the Faith

QUOTE (Karoline @ Mar 1 2010, 02:57 PM) *
Agreed. I think most groups are 50% or higher in awakened concentration. If this doesn't constitute some kind of nod to the 'magic is overpowered' group, I don't really know what you want.



It is worse than it used to be. Most groups were less than 50% Awaken.

I know it is the 6th World, but we are only 60 years in to a five thousand year high mana cycle. I thought magic was suppose to still be at a very low level relative to the peak of the wave.

Add in no Nuyen for ware, being more powerful (in their specialization), and the whole no cyberware/bioware to detect and you have a trifecta as far as Awaken vs Mundane characters.
 
IMHO, the developers need to be working to make Mundanes more popular to play instead of playing up how easy it is to spot cyberware, how rare cyber limbs are, how popular eye replacement is over cybereyes, and raising the cost of skillwires active softs to 10K per rating.

The truth is the more mass produced something becomes the more the masses will have it.

Mass production has been very very good to me...

It will be interesting to see what happens.

I still think it was easier to get one-shot kills in SR3, although I think more in terms of combat sorcerers, which might skew it a bit. But even for a mage, you could get +3 dice from Dragonslayer totem, +6 dice from a manabolt focus, and be rolling 15 dice without even tapping into your spell pool. The TN of spells was the TN to resist them, so a Force: 6 spell was really bad news. Even someone with a Willpower of 6 would be rolling less than half of the spellcaster's dice for the opposed test. And you could cast it at damage level D, so that with a single net hit, you could insta-kill the target. Also, keep in mind that mages in SR3 didn't need so damn many skills. Sorcery and conjuring were the only two skills that you really needed.

Oddly enough so do mine, but that is more from being new (relatively) to the system (And thus having no idea how good mages can be), and me being much more of a technophile than an.... um... arcanaphile? I suppose there is something deeply satisfying and enticing about playing out something that just might have some slim possibility of existing (high tech stuff) than stuff that is almost guaranteed to never exist (Magic).

But as I've learned the rules better, and started really experimenting with awakened, I find that as a general rule, anything I can do with a mundane, I can do with an awakened, only better.

From what little I know about previous editions, I think one of the things causing this problem is how very accessible tech is to awakened. Ware used to be more essence intensive, you couldn't mix bio and cyber well as an awakened, so you had more limited access to that, and the bonuses were generally less desirable. You also couldn't make such easy use of things like trodes and smartgun links and so on to mimic alot of ware. Also, the fact that mundane used to have (infinite?) much more advancement options than they do now is another point of why mundanes have decreased desirability.

Basically the line between awakened and tech is being blurred, but only in one direction. Awakened are gaining easier and easier access to tech, but tech remains completely barred from awakened. Now, I'm not saying that tech should ever gain access to magic, as that would begin to make things like being awakened pointless. I think instead a harsher line needs to be drawn between magic and technology. If you compare an adept to a sammy and the adept doesn't get any tech, then they are on quite even footing. It is when the adept gets to add the ware that the sammy has and still keep the bonuses from being an adept that the adept starts to overshadow the sammy. Keep magic and tech separate, and the two are both viable. Mix them and the one that has access to both will come out on top.

Another issue is that of future advancement. Once a sammy runs out of essence, the only thing he can hope to do is burn massive amounts of nuyen to get small improvements. An awakened however never runs out of the ability to improve their magic (Unless they drop their essence below 1), and the cost increase isn't that large. Extra initiations cost 2 karma more than the previous initiation. Magic only costs 5 karma more than last time.

Getting deltaware on the other hand costs ten times as much, and you have to do it twice because the new thing that you want to put in also needs to be deltaware.

Lots of advantages to being awakened. Basically none to being mundane.



Not really. BC of 1 drops spellcasting pool by one, and lowers the max casting force by two. Presuming a normal build of 5 magic, that still lets you cast up to force 8, which is still enough to take out people in one shot fairly easy. BC of 2 drops spellcasting pool by two, still not that major, but now your max force is 6, which means it'll actually take two spells to drop someone (Gasp!), or you can still just mind control them.

More than that and you are talking very serious background count, not 'a minimal BC'.

And sure, a mundane can drop 240k to be reasonably good at a half dozen skills, but that is alot of extra investment, and precludes alot of things. The mage spell selection I put up doesn't cost any more than they would normally spend on spells, and doesn't really leave them weak in any particular area. Your skillwired mundane on the other hand would be quite weak because all available resources have gone into the skillwires. Your mundane also needs to have about five high stats to be so multi-talented. A mage just needs one stat and one skill, and that one stat can be raised infinitely.

I'd feel reasonably confident in saying that anything a mundane can do, an awakened can do better.

I'm not a huge fan of SR3 so I won't make comments on a system I played infrequently in, but in 1-2 non-awakened was much more common than 4. There was niche protection as someone pointed out, like I think mages had +2 to there TN in the matrix. But also wired reflexes were much more awesome, you went like 2-3 times before the mage could do anything. Sure you could have a spell lock but they were much more vulnerable than sustaining focuses and were a big threat to not only you but the entire party. And while physical adepts could move like sams in speed, you could just load up on bioware and cyberware in ways that they could not compete with.

THIS IS GENIUS.

I'm stealing it.

You don't need so damn many skills for SR4 mages either. In SR3 it was still a separate skill for Ritual Casting, you had to use your Spellcasting dice and Spell Pool to give you Spell Defense (on a 1 for 1 basis) instead having a different skill and getting Rating*Rating dice to protect targets. Banishing is mechanically pointless in SR4 so if you take it it is purely for RP purposes. SR3 Shamans could not have a Spirit for longer than Sunrise/Sunset so Binding is an extra bonus for them. SR4 made mages a lot better.

Your little example is an interesting one. I always forget about Specific Spell Foci. They are 1 of only 2 foci that are viable at Character Creation (Sustaining being the other). An SR4 mage can get a Spell Category focus at 4 dice and all his spells in that Category will be better. Your Manabolt mage is also looking at 3D drain, which means he has to allocate at least 8 dice to Drain to avoid taking any boxes of damage (assuming no 1's are rolled). So he'd have 7 dice to cast and 8 dice to resist. I can trivially build a starting SR4 mage that has 20 dice to cast and 15-20 dice to resist drain. He'd be taking 0 drain and killing the target and still be competent in other fields.

Shinobi Killfist's example of SR2 Spell Locks is an important one. In that version of the game your Sustaining Foci could be used to "Ground" spells cast from the astral. So an astral mage could cast Stunbolt on your Team from the astral and affect everyone in the Physical. Also, there were no Initiative Passes (first intro'd in SR3) so a Sam would literally shoot the mage in the face 2-3 times before the mage even knows what is happening.

I have often wondered why they removed this component from the game. As things stand now, the only real reason to be cautious with foci use is addiction risk. And even this has very fairly vague rules that basically boil down to a GM chosing to directly nerf a character. If anyone can tell me why this change was made, I was younger and not playing SR as much back then so I'm sure I missed something.



Most games struggle with balancing out mulitiple actions in one turn. Shadowrun has never been an exception to this. In the old days, you had to have initiative enhancers to ever get an action in. Then, with the creation of IP people that had spent a lot of money/essence/whatever got hit with a huge nerf-bat as they were told that they were still faster than everyone, but in a delayed capacity. So far, the groups I've run have all appreciated my hybrid house rules (1 for 3e and 1 for 4e) that allow non-initiative enhanced to go earlier in the round, yet still offering a chance for faster characters to get their actions a little faster.

I'd imagine because it was exceedingly lame from the perspective of a mundane. Not only could you not defend yourself from mages in the first place, but with the grounding affect they could sneak up on you in astral and wipe out the entire party with 0 chance of being affected in return by the mundanes. Would mean that foci were useless if you weren't astrally perceiving because any mage could sneak up on you and do a TPK without effort.

I'm glad there isn't the grounding effect any more, because it would be seriously lame to be playing a mundane and suddenly die because an invisible insubstantial enemy that I couldn't see, detect, touch, smell, or otherwise interact with killed me because the team mage left their focus active. Basically that would have been yet another reason it sucks to be a mundane.

There was this, and the gimmick mages. They would summon a 1 force spirit and due to it being both astral and physical they would ground spells through them after telling it to manifest in high security zones.

Both are easily solved by changing grounding so the spell only hits the people who are astrally linked. It is still a limit for the mage because if he has a focus up he can be astrally sniped, but it doesn't hurt the other players because the mage decided to power grab.

Totally removing grounding was a insane power boost for mages since focuses become much more common and easy to use. Sure you lost the ability to ground spells into unsuspecting targets via a manifesting spirit, but that kind of rules abuse was always easily handled by GMs like any other unintended rules abuse.

That type of abuse is what I was asking about. From that standpoint I can understand why they changed things. However, I do tend to think along the same lines as Shinobi Killfist here; limiting the cross-realm affects to those that are astrally linked would probably have been a better idea (unless there is something else I'm missing). The biggest risk I'd see then is if a Materialzed free spirit was targed by an Area spell while standing around those people it was in a Friendship Pact with; but that would be a risk a person would make for dealing with spirits that way.

However, you are correct Karoline that mundanes should not be vulnerable to that type of attack just for being near someone that's astral.

It is a bit sad to see how unbalanced having magic is to not... My group of 6 people has only 2 mundanes. And they feel totally underpowered. I've been trying to come up with things to help out and restore some balance in the world.

I've been toying with the idea of making a houserule that gives purely mundanes 7 points of essence while Magicians, Adepts, Mystic Adepts, Technomancers, Spell Knacks, Latents, etc only get 6.

Also, I don't see why if you can make up your own spells you shouldn't be able to make up your own cyber. Things like "Gamma" grade or experimental prototypes that combine the effects of two related cybers into one unit (like they did with skillwires and wired reflexes, making move-by-wire). As a GM I've made up a few and may introduce them to the characters, or if the characters have skill in it, they might try designing their own cyber (my approval of course).

I've also made a "magic jammer" manatech that's portable and can create a low level background count in a small area. If you can jam the matrix and reduce the effectiveness of TMs and Hackers I don't see why you shouldn't be able to do the same to mana (from a game balance perspective, not a world one. I'm sure someone has a "Mana doesn't work like that argument").

The extra point of essence is certainly helpful, but likely not enough to balance them out entirely. Remember that mundanes already have 1 more effective essence than awakened, because awakened can never let their essence go below 1 unless they want to be barred from any future improvement (And they have to be careful that it doesn't cause them to instantly burn out).

Increasing the use of background count is one of the best ways to help even the playing field, but your awakened players might start getting tired of there being a 3+ BC everywhere they go.

I like the magic jammer idea, though that has the potential to be a bit too much. A 'fully realized' hacker is going to be able to bypass any jammer in the book, and even a starting hacker can likely ignore most jammers, but the magic jammer is (I presume) going to be unavoidable.

You know, I started working on something a while ago that would help alot with balancing magic to mundane, sorta. Someone else posted the basic idea of "We have hackers and their magic equivalent, technomancers, we have sammies and their magic equivalent, adepts, but we don't have the mundane equivalent of a mage." and so purposed using some method along the lines of a hacker's programs (Which by reverse logic emulate a technomancer's complex forms) to mimic a mage's spells. I did a bit of work on fleshing out the idea, but got distracted with classes and forgot about it until recently. Maybe I'll get back to work on it at some point.

Would a houserule that hits (not net hits) add to the drain value help things a bit?

And that wound penalties apply to the drain dice as well?

I suppose it would, but that would be overkill in some areas. Improved invisibility would be worthless because it could never get you past a camera without knocking you on your butt with drain.

Limited to combat spells only... well, yeah, that does help some, but the problem is that a mage generally only needs 1-3 hits to beat most opponents. Forcing them to pick how many hits they want to use before they figure out how many hits the other person got (Or even how big their pool is) might make things very interesting. Then they'd have to guess at if the person has a high or low willpower, if there is maybe a mage counterspelling them, and have to decide if they want to actually have a real amount of drain to make sure they one shot someone, or risk wasting a turn with a safe bet drain wise that might get resisted.

I actually like that alot.

And don't wound penalties already apply to drain? Could be wrong about that though, it isn't something I've really looked at any.

Yeah, This was always the worst.... There You are, looking around, and Bang, you're dead... for no apparent reason...

Sucked...

Keep the Faith

You're doing the dice pool wrong for the SR3 guy. He gets the 15 dice from skill, totem, and the focus. He still has Willpower (typically 6) and spell pool (also typically 6) to soak Drain, which is 12 dice. So he will be able to expend that entire 15 dice at a target. He can also take a fetish limitation to that manabolt spell, lowering its Force to 5 for Drain purposes, meaning that his TN for Drain will be 2. Keep in mind that if he casts it at 6D, the target will be rolling only Willpower, against a TN of 6, and a single net success is all the SR3 guy needs for an instant kill.

Not that the SR4 guy is weak, either, but to get the same results, he will generally need to overcast. Which a well-crafted build can use as a regular tactic - and thus, my earlier assertion that the overcasting rules are the real culprit when SR4 mages are overpowered.

We started an interesting House Rule at our table: If a character does no Simple or Complex actions and does not run for a whole combat round, he may roll Body+Willpower (-damage) to regain any lost Stun Damage.

It's forcing the Mage to use his indirect combat spells.

Does that help if the character is already unconscious? Because the problem isn't that mages can do stun damage without much trouble, but that they can KO anyone in one shot without problem. And if it does work on someone unconscious, then it makes it very impossible to ever do a non-deadly mission because people pop back up as soon as they go down.

Yes it does work even if the character is unconscious. And I guess it does make it very hard to do non-deadly stuff. Guess that means they'll have to brush up on infiltration and stock up on restraints and gags.

It's easy enough to add that certain things like Narcojet or Tranq Patches also puts you asleep for a number of hours (-body) if it manages to fill up the character's stun boxes.

We've only used it for one game, but what I'm hoping is that the PCs still use their stun batons and stun bolts to put the one or two security guards to sleep while sneaking about. But when the shet hits the fan, they're forced put real bullets into their guns.

What I noticed is that the stun bolt becomes a good delay tactic, instead of the Mage becoming the god amongst men, he becomes the Sam's support.

I also made some concrete rules for the "elemental damages" like fire, acid, ice, etc. so that it is more appealing to the Mage player.

Also it makes Stun damage significantly different from Physical damage, which for some reason is appealing to me.

I disagree. Well, I'm relatively new in SR and we have had around 10 sessions of the game, but my players (including my min-maxer type) feels that tech > magic. Now we have 4 pcs (one of them adept), and one rarely joining mage. Our adapt is sadly looking at the huge opportunities that tech provides .

Opponent mages are relatively rare, and they are relatively following logic: shoot the mage first. So, I do not see either counterspelling or mage character as _necessary_. They have their place, but they are not either essential (not so mucha s a hacker) or unstoppable.

Well, 50% of your group is awakened, and there is nothing stopping the adept from grabbing some tech. He could trade in a couple points of magic for +2 reaction, +2 IP, +4 Agility, and still have a bit of room left over for other fun things.


See, this is my favorite thing. Everyone follows the 'geek the mage first' mantra, but then some people claim that the mage isn't any stronger than anyone else. Why then would you bother shooting the mage first? The entire reason that exists is because the mage is the biggest threat in any given group, because the mage can mind rape you, blow you to pieces, and/or summon a giant spirit of doom to do all the above and more to you.

I mean if you have no mage around to counterspell or anything, then some mage walks up behind you with invisibility up, stungbolts you, and carts you all off. So the scenario goes "Okay, you're all infiltrating the facility nicely (Not having noticed that the astral projecting security mage spotted you, returned to his body, and is now standing behind you invisible). Now everyone make a Willpower test for me. Anyone with less than 6 hits is now unconscious."

Yep, that's a fun game alright. Or even more fun, the secmage isn't standing there invisible, but is infact 100+ feet away and sees you through the fiberoptic security system thing for mages. So now no argument about being able to hear him sneaking up on you or using ultrasound or anything.

I can agree with this. As with all my problems with SR4 it stems around the fixed TN and dice pools above 12. Overcasting and Multicasting are the primary culprits for mages and these are both related to large dice pools.

A big piece of that mantra is also that mages usually are the most squishy of the opposition, and the most diverse and unpredictable.
Overcast + Edged stunballs take down teams pretty fast.
It is entirely possible to pour all actions into killing a street sam and only managing to scratch him due to his massive reaction and soak pools.
Mages tend to have much lower dodge and soak pools, so the chance to remove them first is usually the best option anyway.

Which is basically my point.



True, mages are generally squishier than sams, but I don't know that they are that much squishier that they go pop and the sammy isn't scratched. I mean both can wear armor, and both will likely have similar amounts of armor, as their body scores aren't likely to be that vastly different. Reaction scores are only going to be a hit or maybe two different.

So yeah, mages are somewhat squishier (Always assuming they haven't invested in defensive spells) but I don't think it is quite so much worse that it should warrant a 'geek the mage first' mantra that everyone follows and repeats religiously. I mean hackers and technomancers and riggers are going to be even squishier, as are faces and basically everything but a street sam.

But not that different then a street sam with 5(9) Agility and 5(7) Heavy Weapons spamming grenades from an Ares Alpha. (Without possibility of taking Drain damage)

I find that most dedicated combat chars have around 7 Reaction and often an IP to spare to get a full Dodge.
That could mean an average reaction roll of 3 Dice for the Mage Vs 12+ for the Sam.

Techo's are even squishier then mages, but hackers can be almost as good as a dedicated Sam.
They just have narrower combat skills and less money to spend on implants.

Fairly different actually. The stunball only lets you roll your willpower to defend, and effects everyone in the area equally. The grenades however allow you to use reaction and dodge skill to avoid, and then you get body + armor to soak if you haven't gotten away, and the blast loses alot of damage/meter. Oh, also the grenade leaves an IP for people to run for it. So yeah, the sammy can mimic it, except weaker, and the sammy has to sneak in their weapon and has to worry about restricted 'ware being detected everywhere they go.

I also wouldn't be so certain that the mage isn't going to have as many or more IPs than the sammy. It costs a mage a -2 DP or a sustaining focus to get 4 IP. It costs a sammy 5 essence (Or 1.5 if he drops 240k on bioware).

Grenades are easy. You can always soak the damage with armor or even try to dodge. You can't do that against direct combat spells.

Sure, but on the other hand the Stunball only affects visible enemies, doesn't affect drones, can be counterspelled doing no damage, is seriously affected by background count and wards, causes drain etc, ...

Each has its pros and contras. Is it good => yes, but not broken.

Sure, but sustaining has its own problems. Wards, Astral visibility, Background Count, etc...

Invisible enemies: circumstantial (rare)
drones: circumstantial (and if you hit the rigger, you win anyway)
Counterspelling (on NPCs): circumstantial (uncommon*)
Background count: circumstantial (rare)
Wards: circumstantial (rare)
Drain: avoidable
Astral "invisibility": circumstantial (very rare)
Limited use: never (limited by drain, see above)

Contrast to:

Dodge + Armor: Always
Damage falloff: Always
Delayed explosion: Common
Hits all intended targets: Up to the RNG (scatter)
Legal issues: Common*
Limited ammo: Very Common

*Depends on the GM, the run, high/low magic/tech/security setting

Good points, though invisible enemies are fairly rare (and truly invisible enemies require magic, and part of my point is that magic must defeat magic which begs the question of why not have magic). Drones are generally not going to be affected by most grenades due to the + AP, quickly reducing damage, and the ability to shrug off stun damage, though I admit that drones are often a huge weakness of most mages. Counterspell is basically the ability to add a dodge skill (Hardly no damage) and once again requires a mage on the opposing team. Drain is low enough to be negligible by most builds (Though there is certainly the risk of the occasional point or two of drain, I admit).

BC is fairly rare, and entirely the pervue of the GM. It is basically a nerf bat that the game gives to GMs to use on mages.

Wards are rarely a concern mid combat, and at worse are in line with the far more common 'wall' that a sammy has to deal with.

You're right there are some problem with foci, but my main point was more the fact that a mage certainly shouldn't be discounted as only having 1 IP.

I was actually just talking about mundane enemies that hide themselves (Stealth/Camo suits, ducking behind cover and relocating, etc ...)

Why not have magic is a pretty fundamental question for PC's.
In fluff there is a limited supply of magically active people but for players this hardly counts.
It's like how many people in the world with the combination of Astral Hazing + Arcane Arrestor + pick other useful genetech would actually exist, yet lots of teams seem to have one of them.

Magic is very powerful, but I (both as a GM and player) have found that its true strength lies in the stuff that technology can't duplicate, and to act as a force multiplier *.

Most points in my previous posts are indeed variable, depending on a given setting.
But it also shows that magic is no automatic 'I WIN' button, and a lot depends on the environment penalties and tactics used by the opposition.

(*) I mean to enhance other members of the party.
eg: Infiltrator gets a Spirits Concealment as aid, Levitate to get the sniper on a hard to reach roof, etc ...

This always makes me laugh. I love how people here on Dumpshock will say "Magic isn't overpowered! You always geek the mage first and any good GM should be hitting them with Background Count. Plus the Sam can do more damage by firing grenades."

They never stop to wonder why they are going out of their way to nerf the mage yet street sams are always assumed to be able to pack assault rifles with underbarrel grenade launchers full of frag grenades and neurotoxin canisters. If there is one sure sign of broken rules this would be it.

Edit: Not saying you are one of those people W@ge but it is a common argument.

IMO each member of a team should have opportunities to shine. They should have their own niche where they can feel essential to the team and that no one else can do (or at least no one else can do as well).

• Only the tm or hacker can defeat matrix security, hack the drones, doors, etc.
• Only the mage can reliably see and defeat the opposing force's spirits and invisible mages. Only the mage can reliably heal 5 or more boxes of damage when the team gets shot up. Only the mage can levatate the team to safety 'on the fly' (either through the spell, or by using spirits to carry you.) Only the mage can quickly reinforce the party by summoning expendable spirits out of thin air.
• Only the street sam can... well... There's nothing that the sam can do that is uniquely him. With the right spells the mage can deliver and soak damage, sneak, and perform athletic wonders just as well or better. The sam's just a tiny bit better at some of the skills and much more well rounded. So street sams are almost always useful, but hardly ever essential.
• The other thing the sam's got going for him is that he's consistent. He shoots and sneaks and dodges and soaks damage just as well regardless of whether he's in the park or in a toxic dump. That's the value of Background Count - because even if the mage usually dishes out damage better, if they get stuck in a mana void the mage suddenly becomes dead weight and the sam has to pull their cherries out of the fire.

Actually if you look at what he wrote... 25% of the Group is Magical (Basic Group) with 40% being magical when the Ocassional Mage actually Does Show Up...

But Yeah... Always geeek the Mage First if you can... and MAges are indeed powerful, thus the Geek the Mage First Rule...

Keep teh Faith