Trying to figure out how magic attacks work, and am wondering if I'm missing a step. SR4a pp. 183-184 stat that the attack is an opposed roll between the casters Spellcasting+Magic vs. the defender's Body or Will (as appropriate). Net successes are then added to the base damage. The question, though, is: does the defender then get to roll body or will again to "soak" the damage, like the victim of a gun shot gets to roll armor+body after the to-hit roll, or is the damage just applied directly.

So if I had a spell with base damage 5S, and the caster got one net success, the DV would be 6S. Does the defender just take six boxes of stun damage, or does he now get to roll Will to resist some of it?

Thanks.

Nope. One roll.

And, at least as I understand it, its rolled as an opposed check instead of just a casting and then a soak check because if the defender reduces the caster to zero net hits then there is no affect.

For example:

A force 5 Stunbolt is cast with 2 hits and the target gets 2 hits on their Willpower roll leaving zero net hits. This results in no affect on the target (the caster must still deal with drain). If it was a casting roll then a soak roll, the above example would have still resulted in 5S damage to the target.

Did I get that right, or have I been doing something wrong?

Basically because the caster has to deal with drain, it has less ways to deal with the damage.

Plus, there is also counterspelling, and the target can spend Edge to resist the spell.

Yup, no damage resistance test. Use stun spells and cast at force 9 you probably wont suffer much drain if any and 1 net success equals an unconscious foe. And in most cases you will be rolling more dice than your target so you will usually get 1 success.

Yep, stunbolts are fairly broken like that.

By the same token, so a focused burst from an compensated SMG using stick n shock.

At least then the person gets dodge skill, cover, and armor.

And don't say "Well, the person against the mage could get counterspelling." because it isn't universally available like dodge, cover, and armor are.

But how many shadowrunner teams do you see without counterspelling?

How many targets of shadowrunner teams do you see without counterspelling?

Which is more my point. Yes, every runner team includes a mage with a 4 in counterspelling, but not everything that team attacks has a mage backing them up, but most everything they attack (That is worth the bother of picking up any dice) will have a dodge skill and amor. And there will almost always be cover to get behind.

My other point is that it is like playing a game of Rock-Paper-Scissors where you can pick Rock which beats Scissors, Scissors which beats Paper, Paper which beats Rock, or Volcano which beats all three of them. Which do you pick?

If you don't mind my replacing "volcano" with "nuke" then...

Nuke incinerates rock, yes.
Nuke incinerates scissors, yes.
but Paper defines Nuke.

Wink, wink.

What about Lizard and Spoc?

Well, snake is a lizard, so it beats paper and loses to the others mentioned so far.
Spoc is an alien, so he beats nuke, rock, scissors, and snake.

Awesome...

Keep the Faith

It's all here.

Awesome Draco18s.... I needed a good laugh...

Keep the Faith

Anytime.

RPS-25 isn't the only "extended rock-paper-scissors" but its the only one I can find now. The same guy did a 15, a 17, and I thought he was working on a 99.

Oh wait. Here it is, RPS-101.

Totally Crazy... Thanks

Keep the Faith

The big difference to me is a vanilla mage is doing the one shot drop action with stun bolt, where as you have to really build towards it to get the same level of guaranteed success with a Sam. The Sams targets get just a lot more defensive rolling so you have to overkill it more than you do as a mage. Take the focused burst with stick and shock. Base damage 6 up 6 shot burst kick it up to 11 damage with what 3 net successes=14 damage. Even with 1/2 armor and body I have a decent chance to be standing on a lot of targets. Not a great chance or an average chance but decent. And with cover and dodge, 3 net successes isn't easy. All the mage was dealing with is cover, and he only needed 1 net success. Sure I can build a Sam so 3 net successes or more is easy, but I can also build a mage who can 2 shot citymasters with powerbolts, and they don't get counterspelling vs that.

I think at each level of rules manipulation from vanilla to breaking the system the mage is just more of an unstoppable force. He may be easier to kill in some cases or harder to kill in others, it is probably harder to be the full package of both destruction and hard to kill as a mage, but I guess as Karoline put it as a mage you are more frequently choosing volcano.

Now sure when attacking super secure facilities they can have defenses that make it hard on the mage, harder than the sam will face. And there are outside complications that effect a mage more than a sam, there aren't dead kick ass zones, but there are effectively dead magic zones. To me it seems like the blunt hammer approach though to fixing a rules mistake. Hey we made the mage too powerful so hit him with these rules so he gets nerfed, like totally all facilities are aspected against the mage so he drops X dice and magic power etc. Things like magic which are a fairly core thing to the game should balance out on there own and you use aspected areas, background count etc to add an extra challenge not to nerf the mage and bring him back in line with the rest of the team. It just seems to me it requires a much higher level of rules mastery to keep magic balanced with the rest of the team, and that seems off to me.

I don't know, both can be created right out of Character Creation... and both really need to build to do so... The mage will not be doing it with just a Magic of 3 and Spellcasting of 3, and the Street Sam won't probably be doing so with Agility 3 and Firearms 3... they need to build for that level of capability... and a Mage Capable of constantly One-Shotting opposition is not a Vanilla Mage in my opinion... and lets not forget witholding dice for the extra damage (now 18 DV). All soaked with 1/2 Impact + Body and a secondary effect that has to be adjudicated against living targets (and that WILL have a definite effect regardless of whether the victim avoids the worst of it...

As for the 2-Shotting Vehicles, you still have the OR to consider... and besides, a comparable Sam can do the same with HIgh end weaponry that costs no actual Karma to obtain...

Keeps the Faith

Personally, I think standard spellcasting is fairly balanced. The biggest culprit, game balance-wise (at least to me) seems to be overcasting. It adds some flavor for a desperate mage to be able to channel an extra-awesome blast of magical energy at the cost of injuring himself. Unfortunately, for some spell/mage build combos, the mage can overcast all day and soak the Drain.

I would house rule overcasting Drain to go up by one per point of Force over the mage's Magic, rather than the normal half Force calculation. That would make it still doable, but riskier, as it should be. On the other hand, I would also tend to use things like background counts far less.

You also forgot that casting is a complex action. Where the caster would have to overcast or double-cast to reach 12 damage. Mr Street Sam can just double-tap with his two simple actions to shoot those stick and shocks, or worse: burst fire.

Shadowrun is a game of glass cannons, and in that sense mages are on par with other characters. What some people are objecting to (and there is some merit to the argument) is that magic can generally only be countered by magic. Unless you have a SURGED gnome with astral hazing, that is.

While I don't disagree, I think magic is not as overpowered as it was in SR3, where mundanes didn't have Edge to defend themselves with, counterspelling was less common (since mages had to apportion it out of their overall dice pool), and mages could one-shot kill with relative impunity.

There's also the Magic Resistance quality now too.

It was in SR3 too. It was just as useless too.

It's not really "useless." Bear Who Digs Through Walls bought 3 points (IIRC) rather than upping his Willpower because a) it was cheaper and b) his character concept didn't suit a higher willpower.

Yeah, 10 BP for a quality that mimics a +1 willpower only when defending against spells doesn't seem very impressive. It's like "Look, its just like willpower only worse and it cost the same amount!" I guess it is handy if you want to go past soft max for willpower, but otherwise *shrug*

And the thing 'Sammy can do the same thing' forget to include, is stunball which can affect a large number of targets all at once. F9 only has 5 drain and can take down an entire room at least. And if you have a halfway decent spellcasting pool, you can make it an F7 and count on getting 3-4 net hits since no one is going to have more than 5 dice to resist with.

My problem though isn't so much that mages can take down anyone any time without effort as long as they don't have a mage on their side, it is the fact that only a mage can defend against a mage. "Magic must defeat magic!" A sammy on the other hand will indeed generally be able to take down most opponents without too much trouble, but those opponents at least have a chance to protect themselves by having good armor and a good dodge skill and knowing when to dive for cover. Against a mage the only defense they have is don't get seen, which works just fine against sammies too.

Oh, as a char gen thing, yeah, its definitely overpriced.

I was more talking about vanilla SR characters, not average stat average skill characters. You fairly easily get a mage to 9-10 dice range, which the sam might be 15 dice with pistols or something. Sure I can get the sam to 20ish dice with pistols, but I can also get a mage to 20 dice with combat spells. When your average spellcasting successes are 6-7 even citymasters get chumped unless the GM raises the threshold due to size or something. I pretty much can't do that with Sams.

Mages have two benefits that really seem extreme to me.

1. Lack of normal defenses to there attacks.
2. Overcasting or basically whenever you want you can almost flip over the I win card.

I guess my opinion is the mages versatility is extreme, they don't also need the powerhouse card up there sleeve.

Gms can deal with it, I just think it takes a lot more work and rules mastery.

Actually, it is 5 BP per level, and can go up to level 4, which is a pretty good defensive boost. Also, it can be taken as a positive metagenetic quality. So if you want someone really good at resisting spells, get SURGE II, and pick up Magic Restance: 4 and Astral Hazing.

Oh, it's only 5 BP? That does make it a fair bit better, but then you are eating into your rather limited pool of qualities.

Astral Hazing is kind of cheesy to be honest. There isn't much reason that ever non magic character shouldn't get it. It lets you smack mages and adepts upside the head and it is a disadvantage, so it actually gets you BP. What they should have done was make it a 15 or 20 BP (at least) disadvantage for awakened, and a 15 or 20 BP advantage for non-awakened. I mean you completely shut down small time mages and spirits just by getting near them, and even big powerful mages and spirits turn into total novices.

I think the ability to be mostly impervious to magic outweighs the fact that you can't get an occasional boost from your allied mage. And really, how often does the team mage have the extra foci/is willing to take all the concentration penalties to buff up the rest of the party?

Astral hazing really stands out astrally, and might make a number of awakened critters and beings automatically hostile towards you. You will trash wards and similar constructs, attracting undue attention. You will be a liability to your non-magical teammates (most people with astral hazing will also have a fractional Essence, but the hazing also spreads whenever you stay in one place too long). It does offer substantial benefits for a negative quality, but the drawbacks are substantial enough that I would carefully consider it before taking it for a character.

But given that the hazing makes them virtually powerless, this isn't such a huge issue.

Yeah, this could be a serious issue, although I'm not 100% sure that it would alert the ward maker. The background count passing through the barrier wouldn't destroy it, just diminish it temporarily. I figure in favor of making this quality a disadvantage, it should alert the maker if it drops it to F0.
As you said, most will have fractional essence, so unless they're hugging it shouldn't be an issue. And the hazing spreads at 1m/hour, so I don't think it's much of an issue unless you have to be in close proximity to them while they're sleeping and you need to make use of your magic at that point and you can't get away from them at all.

It does merit some consideration, but the main reason every single one of my non-awakened characters doesn't have this is I don't want to look super cheesy to my GM.

Conversely, there's almost always one person in the group that has it.

My current group looks like this:

Adept shifter bear
Mystic Adept drake
Possession mage
"Health" mage pixie*
Mundane sniper/rigger
Astrally hazed 1.5 essence street sam

And we did in fact have Bear throw the street sam at a toxic spirit to disrupt it.

*All but two of his known spells are from the Health group. None of them are "Heal" or "Harm." He likes being drunk and he likes making other people drunk too.

Ummm, last I checked, in Character Gen the Quality is 5 points per level and you can have a max of 4 levels...
After the game begins, it goes to 10 points/level...

I would hardly call it useless,,, it aids in resistence to magic, and would apply to other stats if the magic attacks other stats (Power Bolt, for instance, targets Body, which Magic Resistance will still work for)

I have found it quite useful in several builds... ahving four points of Magic Resistance is just as good as a Mage with Counterspelling 4, and covers you when you do not have a Mage in the group (which does happen from time to time in our game, at least)

Keep the Faith

Mages are indeed very Versatile...

Keep the Faith

At 5 BP it's reasonably priced. Having not checked the book when she said it was 10 I was reacting to that.

For all the reasons you stated I think its a good quality. Just not one I ever picked up.

Admittedly, even though it is a great deal, I rarely ever purchase it myself...

Keep the Faith

There's "good deals" and then there's "useful."
I don't think I spent my full allotment of positive qualities on Slinky, but I did run out of build points. He has a high Willpower anyway (drain), so, not like I needed it.

I always tend to run out of build points... but hey, that is what Karma is for later on...

Keep the Faith

Do you run out of build points before buying active skills?

I really actually did. And that was even after only spending 150 BP on attributes, taking about +15 from qualities (+35 bonus -20 positive), only 3 Edge (I never get less than 5), and barely any equipment (9 BP worth of resources + 10k from debt; 4 BP worth of which I got as a "fluff item" *cough*nexus*cough*).

BP spent on Active Skills (once everything was said and done): 88

Athletics (g) 1
Stealth (g) 2
Blades (Katar) 2
Arcana 1*
Escape Artist 1
Spellcasting 4
Hacking 1
Hardware 2
Locksmith 1
Perception (visual) 1
Computers 1

I spent nearly half that in free knowledge skills:

Sign Language 5*
Corp [Renraku] 2
Hangouts [safehouses] 2
Procedure [security] 3^
Security Procedures 3^
Security Design 2
Architecture 2
Total: 42 (yay logic 5!)

*There was a reason for this at chargen, but I might end up never using it.
^Possibly the same thing? Not that I've found anything to replace it yet.

I'm particularly unhappy with the astral hazing quality. It gives bonus points while protecting the character from magic & spirits. Of even greater concern is the interaction with awakened characters in the team. I can't imagine playing an awakened character who would willingly work with an astral hazer in a shadowrun team.

Why not? Just stay more than a meter away from them, and that's one less person you have to cover with counterspelling. People always seem to act like 1m (It is variable, but generally anyone who has this will also have a tiny essence) is a massive distance that it'd be near impossible to get away from. Fact is that even if you're in a normal car you might be able to keep out of range by having the hazer sit in the back left and you sit in the front right (On the edge of your seat maybe and having the hazer scrunching up in the back, but still).

During the actual run part of the game, it is even less of a problem unless you're all holding hands for safety or something.

It falls into a narrow category of qualities for ShadowRun (in that there are very few of them) called "Dubious Qualities." Dubious qualities are ones that "cost nothing"* because their benefit and drawback are both part of the quality itself. Another candidate is In Debt: you get free money, but have to pay it back later. SURGE also counts, but has been integrated well into the system because you're picking up 2N positive qualities and N negative qualities for the cost of N build points.

The main reason SR doesn't have so called dubious qualities is there's no similar mechanism to limit how many you can take (why not load up 8 different 0 BP dubious qualities?) but the concept does exist in some games.

*Actual costs may vary, but typically would be -5 to +5 BP. Astral Hazing would cost about 5 BP: the -4 force to all magic is a huge benefit, but not being able to take advantage of magical healing, invisibility spells, etc. etc. (not to mention having the mage in the party refuse to ride in the same car as you) is a significant drawback, but not nearly as costly as the advantage.

Not actually true. I've fallen in love with SR3 again and ran a comparison between casters. I found that mages that had the exact same stats in both systems the SR3 character came out on the short end. With the assumption that all Spell Pool was dumped into Drain Resistance I found that the SR3 character did 0.3 more boxes of damage than the SR4 character for the cost of 1.02 more Drain. Not very efficient. Here's some observations:

1) SR3 the damage scales up to 10 much faster. If the GM is using the deadlier over-damage optional rule then from 11 onwards it scales the same as SR4 (because of the 2 successes = +1 Damage Level)
2) SR3 is MUCH harder to spellcast than SR4. Damage would plummet in SR3 compared to SR4 if I had used a more robust target. My test was against someone with Willpower 3. If this had been against anyone with higher Body, Willpower, or an Object Resistance (which starts at 4) the chance of success dwindles much faster for the SR3 caster.
3) SR4 makes up for what seems like difficult casting with MUCH larger dice pools. My SR3 mage threw 6 dice to cast and 12 to resist drain. The SR4 character threw 14 to cast and 10 to resist drain. This was with low levels of optimization.
4) Sustained spells are death to mages in SR3 and hence why Sustaining Focuses are so important. This was due to the fact that sustained spells added +2 to the TN to resist drain. Compare that to SR4 where you lose 2 spellcasting dice instead. Mage could have cast and sustained Improve Willpower for the cost of about 1 damage in order to pretty much guarantee no drain.

Magic has gotten much easier in SR4.

That has been my general impression but I think SR3 has it too good as well. All the editions had problems with magic in some way or another. Some problems are always easy to fix, the basic tell your players not to be douche bags fix. But SR3 and SR4 both have the ability to instant kill with little to no drain. SR2 it at least required a separate spell for the more damaging versions. SR1 casters at least actually faced drain, its problem was enough spells were poorly written enough to break the game.(still exists in 4e but to a smaller degree) Ever since SR2 drain could be almost ignored if you new what you were doing. SR1 may have had the drain as being too high, but SR2-4 the drain has been too light, SR4 might be the easiest drain to soak in all the editions. About the only time I take drain is if I cast an area of effect elemental spell, and really why would I cast those, they are just sucky versions of real combat spells.

Well SR3 still sorta had the new spells for higher damage. You buy spells at a set Force and can only cast it at that Force or lower. If you wanted to cast at a higher force you had to learn it at a higher force. The other limiter would be the variable TNs make learning higher power spells a biznatch. Learning a Force 12 required you to roll a 12 on a d6 (1/36 chance per die). Combat spells are much easier to cast in SR4 now because you don't have the Damage Codes. It was much more variable -- you could often soak it all away or else you flubbed and ended up with lots of damage (annecdotally I remember lots of M, 3 box drain being taken). SR4, with the larger dice pools and fixed TNs, you will soak it all away most of the time or else only take 1 or 2 boxes.

Mundanes are really rare in the shadows in 4th edition.

My group is 2/3 awaken.

And they still say then need to nerf skillwires.

Oh well.