So first off I like and often play mages. They can be a bit overly effective at times but some of the nerfs I've seen proposed are a bit extream. So as possible house rule for folks to contemplate I offer the following. Replace sorcery with <spell type> sorcerys, aka combat sorcery, manipulation sorcery, etc. Allow 1 spells per sorcery type at character creation. Adjust the per sorcery type as you see fit. In addition to weakening mages without crippling them it also adds some flavor, since now being an illusionist or a combat mage means alot more then just what spells you bought. The same concept could be applied to conjuring. It wont stop people from still creating combat casting monsters but it will strongly discourage it.

That sounds.... Pretty Brutal...

Keep the Faith

Agreed, that is 4 extra skills that need to be obtained to be a 'normal' caster, which is alot of BP that mages are already tight on.

The problem really isn't the mage itself, but the lack of defenses against a mage. Only a mage can do anything at all about another mage in astral. Only with the help of a mage can you hope to defend against anything higher than F1 spells. Only with a mage (or SnS ammo) can you take down a spirit. Only with a mage can you drop buff spells. It's like Rock (Rigger) beats Scissors (Sammy) beats Paper (Hacker), but they all lose to dynamite (Mage), so why would you ever pick one of the other three?

Things like 'anti-magic' armor would go a long way towards making mages less powerful.

I really like it.

If you really want to try to balance magicians out a little more, start by making Spell Defense less passive and more active, and then granting all characters a two-stat defense against magic. For instance, Willpower or Body + Edge. Adding Essence into the mix (Willpower + Edge + Essence vs. Magic + Spellcasting + Focus/Mentor) would not only balance things out a bit more, but it would simultaneously give players another reason to maintain a high Essence score as well as making magicians more inherently resistant to spells (which makes sense), while making those borderline cyberzombies (with Essences less than 1) more reliant upon them for protection. Suddenly, making a normal mundane isn't such a bad idea anymore, too.

Nah, a combat monster only needs Health & Combat, and he doesn't even need much Health if he can summon a Spirit of Man or three to cast & maintain his self-buff spells for him.

Your system might be okay if you priced spell categories & spirit categories as though they were Knowledge skills (so 1/2 the price of normal Active skills). Also, of course, keep Counterspelling, Binding, Banishing & Ritual Spellcasting as they are.

I've thought recently about reworking the whole skill system from actives to knowledge.

Active skills would be a general line of training which is sort of like group skills. Knowledge skills being individual skills representing a certain focus within the greater framework and providing specialization synergies with the truncated active skills list.

So, in the case of Sorcery, the mage would buy up the Spellcasting Active skill, and then take Knowledge Skill Combat Magic to help determine his Spellcasting DP. Without the KS for Combat Magic, he could default to just the general Spellcasting Active skill. Also, a Knowledge Skill level can't surpass the Active skill level.

For a firearms example, you could take a Face character who relies on Pistols. Rather than the current model, where he would likely buy Pistols up to 4 and take a specialization in SA pistols, he would buy the Firearms Active skill up to 2, then buy the Pistols KS up to 2 and potentially take a specialization in SA Pistols. The total DP is the same, but the character still gets 2 dice for other guns, which represents his familiarity with the basic properties of ballistics.

I'm just toying with the idea for now, so it's not really fleshed out in full. But I do like the potential for skills to once again take prominence over Attributes when it comes to characters being badasses.

This idea is rather elegant, and does what specializations were supposed to do so much better. I would like to see this perhaps fleshed out more...

Also, I agree that the OP's idea limits mages an incredible amount... You'll see a lot of characters even less fleshed out than normal, having to stretch their BP so thin. I think rather than nerfing mages until they can barely function, perhaps boost everything else a bit. While magic armor would likely step too much over the "magic and tech don't mix" line, making spell resistance double attribute, or even Will x2, could work wonders.

I have to disagree entirely. Mages get Counterspelling already. Giving them an extra 5-6 dice on top of what they already have just makes the existing problem worse. We want something that does not stack with Counterspelling (so that the Sam does not see reason to have a Gnome Magician surgically grafted to their back), and is granted to the people who don't get to take Counterspelling.

Apparently you missed the first part.

By more active, I'm talking about genuine counterspelling. Similar to the rules for martial arts, where the magician would have to be aware of the spell being cast, and then using an Interrupt action (forfeiting their next action) to counteract the spell with their own test.

What Doc Funk said. Further, what you're suggesting mostly makes them narrower as opposed to less powerful, so while it may make a given mage less able of leveraging every trick in the book that gives you headaches, it doesn't go towards ameliorating any of them directly.

I've always liked the idea of mundanes being able to purchase Counterspelling Foci and having a mage bind it to them for an additional cost..

I should have narrowed my quote to the bit about adding Essence to the resistance test. Mea culpa.

For clarification: I disagree with adding Essence to the Spell Resistance roll, and I have no comments on the other suggestions.

Combine ideas.

Mundanes can have the Counterspelling Foci bound to them, but they can not have Foci whose rating is greater than their highest integer Essence score.

So, the .01 Essence cyber-monster gets no foci, but the 3.2 Essence Face with the Bioware can still buy and bind a Counterspelling Foci up to rating 3 in power.

It wouldn't matter. They weren't separate suggestions. They were meant to be used together; getting rid of Counterspelling as a passive bonus to resistance tests, giving everyone multiple stats to help resist spells, and allowing magicians to sacrifice their actions to try and counter particularly aggressive spells (ie, fireballs and manabolts, but not passive invisibility or most detection spells).

Quite frankly... I've had the same idea as the OP... only a different implementation to avoid adding even more skills to an already strained list.

Bust manipulation up into two schools (mental & physical) as otherwise it's a bit too much in a single school. So you end up with 6 schools.
For each point bought in sorcery, you can raise 4 individual schools by 1 each. (someone w/ rating 6 sorcery could have 4 in everything, or adjust accordingly, also by using that method... no school could be higher than the sorcery rating similar to how adept powers can't go higher than magic). This avoids the even more skills on an already point-pressed character (also avoids problems w/ multiple specializations in multiple spell schools).


Karoline:
Actually rigger beats mage, mage beats street sam (or anti-tank armored troll), and streetsam beats rigger. Unless your power level is really high, mages have a lot of trouble w/ drones (and even then it's no sure thing to get past that OR5).



I find funk's suggestion rather bad. Essence increases resistance is completely counter to the entire paradigm of SR magic. (where object resistance is based on how 'unnatural' it is). Even worse, resistance pools end up larger than casting pools (without even adding counterspelling yet). And always adding edge is just as bad. It's just a quick path to making mages almost completely useless except as party buffers and spirit wranglers.

It also ignores that gunplay has the exact same problem... (skill + attribute vs attribute) and even worse can fire twice per pass and do things to eliminate the opposing dice pools (wide burst). The bigger problem is people don't apply negative dicepool penalties to the mage (or provide for such things as lightweight background counts which aren't all that uncommon). Quite frankly, generally it's not spells which are the problem, it's spirits and their powers.

The only decent idea I've seen is allowing someone to go on 'full defense' in a similar manner... and roll double willpower. Even that's questionable as the mage is still taking drain which is their big limiter on what they can do.

Not really. Targets that are more "alive" and unwilling to be affected by magic should be more resistant than those that lack the same amount of "spirit." Objects don't make resistance tests, and characters with particularly low Essence scores are closer to being an object. By your logic, characters with a high Willpower should be easier to cast spells on, since the lower your Willpower, the more object like you are (considering they have a Willpower of 0).

Anyway, it doesn't really matter. The use of Edge and/or Essence was just an example. The point is to grant more than just one feeble attribute to the resistance test. That's the reason magic is so overpowered. Attacking tertiary rules to try and fix the primary is just stupid.

And once again you demonstrate a completely flawed analogy and failure to understand.

Highly processed objects (such as cyberware) have higher object resistances... Refining a natural material makes it harder to affect. So suddenly refining and enhancing a creature makes it more vulnerable to magic and not less. You've turned the relationship on it's head. Put another way, you're effectively saying putting the HIGHEST object resistance (highly processed and complex cyberware parts) inside a living frame makes them more vulnerable. Conversely, you're saying the vegan freak who eats nothing but the easiest to target and affect organic foods and materials is more resistant.


And by your exact wording... "Targets that are more "alive" and unwilling..." are already in the rules.. it's called their "body" and willpower stat!

If you want to make mages less of a threat without having to come up with a whole bunch of house rules, make Arcane Arrester a trait that anyone (rather than just SURGElings) can take.

Cost it at 20 pts to make it "easy" to take, but if you take it, you're not getting many other positive qualities. If you want it more common make it cheaper.

No, I understand perfectly well.


But YOUR logic says that shouldn't be the case. YOUR logic is that the closer a person is to being an inanimate object, the harder it should be to affect them with spells. Objects have a Willpower of 0. The exact OPPOSITE of a high Willpower. But, apparently, in some twisted mental state that you live in, the exact opposite occurs if you look at Essence. Good. Fine. What the Hell ever.

I'm not going to get into another piss match. I've stated my case, and included the "it doesn't matter because Essence was just a damn example of the base concept." Feel free to continue rattling your bonebox about how dumb you think it is to use Essence. I don't give a flying fuck.

As much as I hate to support whining on either side, there's no reason that living and nonliving 'objects' should not be treated differently. In Shadowrun's magic system, being alive is a profound categorical distinction.

What about my idea of Arcane Arrester?

I mean come on, it's RAW and you don't have to come up with a zillion house rules to make magic weaker.

I can't find mention of this in your post. You may have intended to state it, but you did not.

mages are not overpowered, but direct combat spells, just ban them...

I'm partial to the idea of using Willpower + Attribute for spells that don't allow a Damage Resistance Test.

Essence for Mana Spells & Body for Physical Spells.

I say Essence for Mana spells because as you get implants, your overall integrity is increasingly damaged making it easier to introduce further damage (due to your natural ability to resist such damage being lessened).

Body for Physical Spells should be self-explanatory.

Wonderful, more fucking tech hate, can i get some some more cyber back in the punk portion of my shadowrun please? I do not believe people should be rewarded for having a high essence score outside of it's tie to magic and to a lesser extent resonance, no one complains that knives should be "balanced" with guns, yet for some reason folks always think unaugmented humans should be balanced against folks who have literally been upgraded to be better in every way or that those same people because they have paid money and a finite portion of their maximum capability to do something other then push the "I win button" that is shadowrun's magic system.

Lurker
Sooooooo tired of the cyberware eats your soul meme.

Then go play another fucking game.

Funny mental image, Big troll with a full cyber arm, back handing a mages fireball to get the object resistance bonus

No you go play another game, may i suggest D20 modern, it has all these wonderfull spell rules and you can play a wizard in it all you want.

I have next to know experience actually playing the game, but reading through the rules and creating characters for my Gencon events, I had a different idea of how it would be. I thought that ranged attacks would be way overpowered and magic very limited. My gunslinger adept has a DP pf 17 with his revolvers. He can dual weild, but if he chooses to shoot only once a pass, thats a DP of 17 versus an average reaction of 7 or so. With 3 IP's, he can do this 2 more times a round with the same DP, while the defender is -1 DP per extra attack. Again, I have not seen the mechanics in game yet, but on paper it looks as if guns are SUPER deadly in this game. My other character happens to be a mage, and I have the feeling I'll not be using my spells a whole bunch. Many of the spells have a significant drain value, and with a drain pool of 12, I figure each spell I cast will cost me at least a few points of stun. Perhaps I am planning to be too cautious, but I don't want to cast a bunch of spells and put myself close to my stun damage track max. Seems silly to cast to the point you pass out. Again, I have not seen the mechanics in play yet, and I trust everyone's explanation on how it actually plays out, I am just a bit surprised. Gives me a little more hope for my mage character though.

Jesus, again? Cyberware is the most common, most powerful, easiest to get thing in Shadowrun. There is no 'hate', except in these threads between crazy Dumpshock users.

In general Shadowrun is a game of glass cannons. Every type of character can be potentially really deadly in his chosen field. Magician usually get the heat cause there's very little mundanes can do to defend against magic except having a mage on their side too.
At least against firearms you could potentially carry large amounts or ballistic armor and have reasonable chances of surviving combat against your gunslinger. Against a magician your defense DP normally is restricted to a attribute, most likely Willpower.
Which is, why i really like Dr. Funkenstein proposal of using two attributes for spell resistance and making counterspelling a kind of full defense interrupt action like dodge.

-CJ

Except for all the references in the books to cyber-psychosis, buggy ware and negatives to healing checks based on amount of essence lost (for those keeping score for your average sam these penalties will exceed the old penalties for medicine on magically active penalties). This notion that while cyber is cheap and common yet the vast majority of NPC's depicted in the books are lightly or not cybered at all because of some weird concerns about their essence or modding their bodies or some such. In the actual canon cyber hate is alive and well even after 50 years cyberware is something only adopted by fringe elements and military special operators for anything beyond cybereyes and datajacks the later having become pointless with the improvements to trodenets.

Edit and addendum: For the record i'm all for a second stat being added to magic resistance tests but making it essence out of some belief to "give players another reason to maintain a high Essence score" when there is only a tenuous metaphysical reason to do so to gloss over what is, and always has been, a mechanical control.

I think they're probably more concerned about spending the price of a car on their bodies for bonuses that really only apply to shadowrunners, not 'Essence'. The fact that, in cyberpunk, cyber is not the body you start with doesn't constitute hate.

While I mostly agree with your thoughts I would like the skill cap raised (not at character creation) so that way our non-awakened, non-cyberwared friend can have something to actually be good at after character creation. I felt SR1 & 2 were a bit hard on the mages but SR3 & 4 have both taken it the other way. While I really like the SR4 magic rules, it feels like an "i win" button more than ever.

As someone without a pony in this race, I'm going to be blunt: it looks to me that you're saying that mostly because you just plain dislike anything that makes cyberware a bit worse due to this whole "cyber hate" issue, not because Doctor Funkenstein ignored that essence is a balance control knob with some fluff tacked on. Characters with neither magic or augmentations are easily some of the weakest characters in SR. That's the setting and I'm fine with that. It makes sense given what cyberware and magic are able to do for you. But it is a li'l rough for those odd ball players who would prefer to be minimally cybered, and I didn't see Doc do anything but suggest an option that would throw them one li'l bone for once, with the full knowledge that this would make keeping some essence desirable. That you dislike the idea is simply a different stance on where the game should be thematically and is no reason to be as hostile as your posts are coming across.

Anyway, I'd probably just go with Body+Will or Willx2 depending on the spell type. Maybe even Will+Intuition for Illusions. Either way, I can definitely understand the urge to give mundos another source of resist dice. And making countermagic into an interrupt mechanic that's similar to the dispel and martial arts rules would have the handy benefit of removing the whole "Can my Magician give resist dice to everyone in the stadium even against attacks he isn't sure might be coming?" question. Overall, I like Doc's suggestion, and I think latching onto the essence option is doing the idea a disservice.

How the hell is it that Trollman gets banned and you do not? The inconsistent moderating here pisses me off to no end.

Yeah, that was pretty unnecessary, but the post that inspired it was pretty reactionary as well. This whole place is kinda ornery some days; it's a relatively small enough community that one thread is never truly isolated from what happened in others.

The main reason that Mages are considered overpowered is that Direct Combat spells are overpowered. Mage rolls full spellcasting dicepool (Spellcasting + Magic + Mentor Spirit + Specialization + Foci) v. the Mundane's Willpower (or Body, if a physical spell) plus counterspelling, if any. If he gets any net hits, the mundane takes the full force of the spell, plus net hits, and do not get a soak roll. The kicker is that the drain for direct combat spells is cheaper than indirect spells, which do give a soak roll.

Ding ding ding ding ding!! Blam, we have a winner. When I read that, I just... wow. Perfect. No more stun balling everything. No more Manabolting every spirit you see.

I LIKE it.

Better yet, just add three to the drain on all direct damage spells.

Also, I like the idea of having more active spell defense. If a mage sacrifices his action stopping spells, he should be able to increase his pool. Maybe keep counterspelling as it is, but give casters the option of spending a complex action going on spellcasting DEFENSIVE and until their next action, they can add their Magic rating to all counterspelling tests?

It could be used as an interrupt like full dodge mode.

I think the Mind Altering ones are also overpowered, especially if you look back at 3e or 2e where a guy with high willpower got to not only roll his willpower but it also counted as the target number, granted the guy with low willpower was double screwed.

I'm not the one whining and crying about a core concept of the game. Technology vs. Magic has been a major theme of Shadowrun from the very beginning. It's called "Essence" for a reason and affects both aspects of a character simultaneously and intentionally; it improves your access to technology at the cost of lowering your ability with magic. That's the whole point of the mechanic. You're the one constantly bitching about that, not me. If you can't stand it, it's your fault for still playing the damn game.


Just for you. Sorry for editing it out of my signature. I got tired of disabling it when I posted IC elsewhere on the forum. As for your question, I guess it's because people like you get to continue bitching and complaining about individual posters all the time, too. At least mine's aimed at discussions about the game and opinions thereof far more often than not.

OK people, I don't like to shout but...

WHAT ABOUT USING ARCANE ARRESTER AS A POSITIVE QUALITY RATHER THAN JUST A SURGE QUALITY?!?

Honestly, I brought it up twice and NOBODY said anything about it! It's RAW, and you don't need 500 zillion house rules to make magic more "balanced".

I guess my issue there is that Arcane arrester is a bit of a bandaid solution from a game master perspective. It affords PCs protection but as a GM tool it leaves a bit to be desired, since the quality is at the very least unusual if not unheard of. Magic is one of the reasons I tend to make heavy use of drones in my games. Direct magic and mental manipulations obviously are at the very least tiring to use against drones if you're even able to use it against them at all, and a facility having a pack of taser equipped ferrets* or a few rail drones in the testing lab hits me as pretty reasonably cost-effective relative to having living, breathing mundane security guards posted everywhere.


*Not the furry kind.

How does that really solve anything? All it does is let players pick it up for about 5 BP less, if they were really interested in getting it to begin with. And even then it's just a patchwork solution to a much larger problem. Players would still have to buy it, even if it's not appropriate to their concepts, and counterspelling becomes a lot more powerful than it should be in any group that has multiple such characters.

The magician nerf rule playtested and favored at my table is as simple as removing the "/2" from all Drain equations (Sorcery and Conjuring). No further changes to Dice Pools, foci or resistance tests were needed (though as some of you may know I rigorously employ visibility and cover modifiers to all Spellcasting). The change makes Dice Pools for casting/conjuring and Drain resistance more important and reinforces the use of foci and fetishes, but generally just pushes Force down since DPs for non-maxed magicians tend to be in the 10-16 range anyway.

On a different idea, and I realize "magic" armor has already gotten some dislike but what about a new prototype piece of bioware that inbeds magically disruptive tissue/fungus/symbiots/etc into the wearer. It allows them to survive better but their can be evil consequences for allowing an awakened life form to use you as a host. Especially if you don't know who the supplier is.

The trouble with nerfing direct combat spells is that they are the main offensive weapon for spellcasters. If I had to take a nerf bat to the mages, this is what I would do:

1. Give mundanes the option of actively resisting a spell. They have to expend a complex action to do so, but it lets them double their Willpower to resist a spell.

2. They used to have rules for mundane uses of magical skills - I think mundanes should be allowed to take banishing, for the sole purpose of attacks of will against spirits.

3. Overcasting should be dangerous and comparatively rare, not a use-all-the-time tactic. I would increase the Drain for an overcast spell by one per point of Force (rather than per two points of Force) once it goes over the normal maximum.

4. Mental manipulations should have (Willpower/2) thresholds to work like they did in SR3.

5. If you are going to have hard caps for everything else, have them for Magic. For example - Magic can not be raised higher than twice your Essense rating, and you can only get up to 6 levels of initiation.

That might work, and as you say... it is a Quality already...

However, I just pick up the Magic Resistance Quality to cover that if I want more resistance... helps out the physical cyber guys pretty well in my opinion...

Just Sayin'

Keep the Faith