In the 13th printing of SR3, the publishers fixed the resistance test for Illusion Spells to match most other types of spells. Now if the target gets an equal number of successes they realize its an illusion. Previously the target needed to exceed the caster's successes to realize it.

See SR3 Errata for all errata to date.

Excellent. Now I must unlearn yet again.

Blast! They have foiled me yet again. But victory shall still be mine...

~J

won't be taking that errata on board - we have a long standing tradition of 'a tie goes with the attacker', be it melee combat, spells, or a simple opposed test for a maglock. Its consistent, and works both for and against the players.

So in your games SpotLite if a spell gets zero net sucesses it still hits? Ouch. It's good to be a mage in your game.

Our Team went with "Tie goes to attacker in combat, and to the defender with Magic" until we found that Illusion Spells violated one of the first rules of magic. With this new errata, life is easier for us.

It's hardly a great cataclysm, since it's not uncommon for mages to come out with more successes than the other guy has dice to resist.

No they don't.
Especially not things like Invisibility.

~J

I'm with Kagetenshi, it's only really combat spells that would be adversely affected, and that rule already applies to them, so again - no biggy.

This rule correction eliminates a weird opposed test with Hot Potato. The old way, it was possible for the spell to succeed with zero successes. The target then attempted an opposed test with his Willpower against zero net successes of the spell.

This change brings the spell in line with one of the first rules of spells, if the target generates the same number or more successes, the spell does not affect the target (SR3.183, Spell Effect). Now only Damaging Manipulation spells are a special case to this general rule.