So, the Commanding Voice adept power lets you use command sentences with at most five words. Which are the sentences you've found most useful?

"Stop shooting at us!"

Or optionally –

"Stop shooting at us, f***face!"

Unless that counts as two commands ...

"Shoot yourself in the head."
"Fall asleep."
"Toss me your guns."
"Pretend you're a [insert non-preditory animal here]." <- more for entertainment than effectiveness
"Fight amongst yourselves."
"Run for your life."
"Tell me your bank password."

Edit: The problem with a command like 'sit down and shut up' or 'stop shooting us' is that you have to remember the command doesn't last long. They'll sit down, then stand right back up. They'll stop shooting for a moment, then start shooting again. If they give you their weapons though, or kill themselves, or move themselves out of combat, etc they'll be disabled for slightly longer.

"Give me your sister's commcode"

"Remove your underwear" (try doing that in full underwear"

Didn´t come up often...
One of my players used "Drop your weapon" only to be anoyed, when the angry pimp picked it up again with his next available action - at least it bought him some time ...

I guess "reboot your com-network" would be nice, if you encounter the enemy hacker in person

This power would be so much more effective in Germany. German tends to combine several words into one large word. Usually works better with nouns though...

"Shit yourselves"
"Drop your pants"
"Drop your guns"
"Overcast your highest drain spell"
"Summon a F25 spirit"
"Shoot the person beside you"

he will probably not have Magic 13. but you could still ask for a F10 or so. chances he'll drop dead and the spirit won't come are good. I just imagine my GM rolling and the summoner achieving 1 net hit, while not resist the drain and the spirit go free

Anything over twenty would put if over the five word limit too.

That was my idea, too during the last run. A (theoretically) great way to kill a mage...except he survives the summoning and the spirit has lost the challenge. In this way.....you are really, really f***ed up.^^

Is 'force' even a known word in SR? And even more than that, would a mage know what a 'force 20' spirit is exactly? Hermetic and Chaos mages might have developed a word like force to help them quantify the strength of a spell, but I'd call BS on a player asking for specific force spells/spirits. Overcast and drain might also fall into this category.

Player speak has a habit of slipping over into character speak.

Of course in this case the mage could just look at the adept blankly, then blast him for being a dick.

"Overcasting" I could see as in-character lexicon. A mage would know how well each of his spells effects him, and how strong he can make them and at what point that "strength" causes him to get nose bleeds (or bleeding ears, etc.).

"Force" probably exists in some sense, a unitless measurement like "Decibels,"* that quantifies** magic in some fashion.

Drain, "force 25," or spirit size is probably beyond in character talk, though. "Cast spell that hurts you" is 5 words and should imply overcasting. "Hurt yourself most by spellcasting" should as well, and might also get you the mage's most draining spell.

*Decibels are the x in a 10^x unitless measurement of sound, which is why negative values are still positive fluctuations in the air.
**Not all mages will use the same measurement. It might vary a bit, too, like "a pinch of salt" being a valid cooking ingredient.

I could see a word synonymous with overcasting, or a phrase, but I don't think the word would necessarily be overcasting, and especially not across all traditions.

And I agree, force likely exists in some form, most likely in hermetic and chaos traditions, as they are the ones that treat magic the most quantitatively. But there is nothing that says that their term is force, and there is even less that says that our F5 spell would be rated at '5' for them. They could rate it 50, or 5, or .5, or ln(5).

"Cast spell that hurts you" - Force 1 stunbolt at self
"Hurt yourself most by spellcasting" - Bit harder to worm your way out of this one, have to think about it which conflicts with the high speed nature of the ability. Of course, this means that you're going to have a F12 fireball or something coming at you. Yes, you might take out the mage, but you'll likely get fried in the process.

Oh, completely. You have to be real careful with that one.

(Also, a F1 stunbolt at self isn't a complete waste, the guy spent his action, kekeke)

Very true, but that can be said about virtually any command. Oh, I got a fun one:
"Everybody Tango!" *Start beat on commlink*

"Go ejaculate over a cop"

If the area is right, substitute "cop" for "Troll" "bloodmage" or "Dragon".

Remember that the requested action only lasts for 1 combat round, tops. They'd "go" then come right back before they get to said cop/troll/dragon.

This reminds me of the line from the end of Push, where an "adept" uses "commanding voice".

When I first read the topic line, though, my initial thought was "Life sucks, then you die." But I guess that would just make your combatant morose.

With a five word verison of that I'd so pull a fight club ending on the players. Maybe a couple boxes of damage though.

As for force and all that, I'd let a hermatic talk that way.

They probably have long discussions over the quantized nature of casting. i.e. why you can't cast a force 5.732 spell.

I'm sure you can cast a force 5.732 in the SR world, it is just that there is no reason to from a gameplay standpoint, so it wasn't included.

I think i remember a name for a scale of power of magic mentioned somewhere in a novell.
In our world we handled it the way that hermatic mages really have a scale for power (with which you could identify people casting illegal force spells in SR3)

On Topic:
Better than "drop your gun" -> "Throw your gun, far away."
Maybe you'll get hit by a gun, but thats better than a bullet.

That makes no sense. A decibel is the unit that sound pressure level is measured in. It is a dimensionless unit, not a unitless measurement.

Improvised weapon throwing adept.... yeah, you get those as adversaries all the time.

Really, "Toss your gun to me" is probably a better turn-out anyway. It means a weapon closer at hand that I could potentially use while still disarming them quite effectively.

Unless all your opponents are armed with spears

Toss means underhanded doesn't it? They'll have trouble doing much with a spear tossed underhand.

Also, spears aren't guns.

Then they wouldn't toss the spears, either, as they are not guns. Yay for exactness when it comes to the words you use! Like a D&D wish, players are trying to wrangle the most out of 5 words.

I had an NPC do "Stop the car, now." I shoud bring in another and have them say some of the gun-tossing ones, or "Eject the clip." or "Jump out the window" or "Jump off the roof".

Reminds me of that one commercial:
"Hard left turn in 15 feet."
"Floor it."
"Stomp on the brake."

But "summon the most powerful spirit possible" would work, wouldn´t it?

...If it wasn't 6 words.

blast yourself with powerful magic?

"Poke out your eyes" might last long enough for one eye. If worked into a sentence it'd be kinda fun to do "Pull the pin on this grenade, and drop the grenade". Obviously more than 5, but the power also mentions working things into a phrase.

"Floss with a monowhip" would just be hilarious. You know, in a deranged sort of way. As would "Limbo with a monowhip". "Play tag with the ghouls", "Hump Lofwyr's leg", man, so many to choose from.

Thats why you use either 'Shoot your own eyes out', 'Gouge your eyes out now', 'Stare into this magnesium flare', and so on. Handle both eyes in one go

The NPC turns around, walks out of the room, gets released from the power (1 round duration) and walks back in and smacks you.

The NPC says "I can't hump my own leg."

"Shoot your mage"

That's a really good one actually.

"Shoot your mage, full auto." is better*







(*when applicable)

thirty, forty, fifty, sixty, seventy, eighty, and ninety also would work.

Last I checked, "twenty-five" was one word.

"Bite off your right thumb."

Win. Right up there with "Shoot yourself in the junk."

"Lobotomize yourself with your gun." "Gun" can also be switched for any weapon they happen to be holding.

It can also be switched for weapon

Hush you, I'm still on my first cup of coffee of the morning. I'm not awake until I've had a full pot and I'm 1/2 way through a day of work.

Just to be the kind of jerk GM I am, against gangs and low tech enemies "What's that?" -command fails

Addendum: Which at least causes them to stand confused

Also while reading over Commanding Voice an interesting thought occurred to me. You gain a -2 dice penalty for each time the power has been used in the past 24 hour hours. I can see a security detail, especially if one of their adepts has commanding voice effectively innoculating themselves against this power. Not something I'd put against the runners everytime but definitely an interesting curve ball. Also interestingly it seems characters with cyberears would be unaffected although that runs up against the old "cyber as part of you for magical concerns" debate that only seems to come up when people want things in the magic users favor. On the whole I'm comfortable with cyberears providing protection against this power though from a game balance standpoint.

Yes, you gain a -2 penalty for each time you use the power, not each time someone somewhere uses the ability. It is not an 'on a specific target' thing, it is each time it is used period. This is cool because it means if the adept uses it to bypass a secretary, she'll be that much weaker against a firewatch team.

As for cyberears, you hit it strait off. You have the 'it is part of you' argument. Just like a mage can use cybereyes to target a spell, cyberears will be analogous enough to transmit the words properly. You would however be safe if you wear headphone or a helmet that simply retransmits sounds inside the phones/helmet. Actually I don't think even that would work, because it isn't being broadcast or amplified or transmitted wirelessly or anything. I think it should be viewed as: If they are withing actual vocal range of the adept and can hear and understand the adept, it triggers. Regardless of if they have cyberears or a helmet or anything like that.

On further reading Karoline I think your wrong on both counts but we can agree to disagree. The -2 dice pool modifier doesn't designate who the comanding voice comes from, only that it comes from someone. It could very well be that the human mind starts to pick up on suggestions coming externally and resists them better no matter the source. Remember the basic rule of thumb when it comes to adept power is your changing yourself not the target. Commanding Voice should follow this pattern as well.

Furthermore the adept power is not a spell so the essence vs real thing is traditionally concerned with. It has a flat limitation that it doesn't work when rebroadcast through tehcnological means. I don't think anyone could make an argument with a straight face that cyberears are not technological means. This may not be the intended effect of the powers wording but I'm actually pretty comfortable with it and feel it's about right for a .25 cost power that can affect an unlimited number of people.