Immunity
Type: P • Action: Auto • Range: Self • Duration: Always
A critter with Immunity has an enhanced resistance to a certain
type of attack or affliction. The critter gains an “Armor rating” equal to
twice its Magic against that damage. This Immunity Armor is treated
as “hardened” protection (see Hardened Armor above), meaning that
if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically
does no damage. Additionally, this “armor rating” is added
to the damage resistance test as normal armor.

Immunity to Age: Some beings possess immunity to aging. These
beings neither age nor suffer the effects of aging.

Immunity to Normal Weapons: This immunity applies to all
weapons that are not magical (weapon foci, spells, adept or critter
powers). If the critter has the Allergy weakness, then the Immunity
does not apply against non-magical attacks made using the allergen.

I am surprised no one has come up with immunity to drain yet.. lol..

It already exists, and in fact is already incredibly affordable - even for a starting character.

At the low, low cost of 0 BP/Karma, you too can be 'Mundane'! If that doesn't tickle your fancy, try Non-Mystic Adept!

As long as you aren't channelling mana, you won't have to worry about resisting a drain effect!

Be 'Mundane' today!

Immunity to Drain would be...overpowered and broken, but functionally would act as extra drain dice (and if the drain value is lower than the immunity level, its ignored).

It all but removes the drain mechanic entirely if written under existing immunity rules.

You get 2x Magic to resist the effect - which is the Force limit. AFB at the moment so I can't doublecheck drain values, but I seem to recall most of it being F/2 +- something - so it's more or less free spells that aren't overcast - and several that are.

that would mean overcast combat spells at every turn..

for most spells, yes. There are F/2 + 5 and higher drain spells. And even then the immunity would provide 2x magic rating which covers all non-overcast spells (completely, even at F/2+5, you could cast at F4 with Magic 4 to be looking at 7 drain vs. 8 "armor").



Yes it would. I said it would be broken, I just didn't go into the specifics. I just posted how it would function.

I figured there were higher, so I tried to keep the 'all but' modifier in there.

This is clearly a bad idea to work out, but what rules prohibit making an 'Immunity to Drain'? I'd go with it's not classified as an affliction since it's only a direct reaction of spellcasting, but I'm not sure what the actual rules would say regarding it.

Immunity reduces damage by (Magic x 2)
Maximum Force is (Magic x 2)
Drain is typically (Force / 2) + N, with N never more than 5.

So immunity to drain would mean never taking drain, even at maximum overcasting, as long as your Magic is at least 5.

Drain would have to exceed the Magic attribute, or the 2x Magic attribute?

I don't deal with Immunity often.

Pattyhulez: Trolling with ridiculous munchkin power-gaming ideas that take a giant, steaming dump on the intent and spirit of the rules since 16 August 2010.

Another reason why "Immunity" should be classified as a "Super-Resist" and given an explicit rating. That way we could do "Super Resist" Drain 3 (provides 3 "hardened armor" against Drain). Which isn't terribly overpowered. 3 extra drain dice is significant, but the "hardened" part wouldn't matter much, but it could be used as a GM tool to create some interesting critters/spirits/NPCs.

HUH?
Of canon spells Firewater aura has a drain code of f/2+6, Napalm has a drain code of F/2+7 and Napalm Wall has a drain code of F/2+8.

And if you for some crazy reason wanted to, you can by the rules design a variant of elemental wall spell that has all 12 elemental effects and only a measly F/2+28 as drain code

That is crazy. Minimum 29? No thank you.

Yeah and the only benefit you get is that the wall has every elemental effect in the book, not exactly the most usefull think in the world

Aye.. you have not even heard of my masterplan yet... hehhehee

Oh, those are the crazy multi-element spells aren't they? Those struck me as even less useful than the indirect elemental attacks, due to bad cost/effective ratio.

Overcasting even Ball Lightning at will should be enough for anyone. (More than enough, in fact.)

Not True...

EDIT: Never Mind...

Hermetics already throw a fat hand of dice on Resistance and then First Aid (just another Complex Action.)
You do it right, drain is never a problem.

Very True... Most times, I do not even need First Aid...

And it's crazy that First Aid would affect Drain damage anyway…

NERPS, on the other hand...

Well, yeah, thats true too...

how do you do it right? noob here..

Not quite. If the damage does not exceed Mx2 then it is negated. Otherwise Immunity is Mx2 extra resistance dice.

New Metamagic: Matrix Casting
New Skill: Threading

Make a Drain Stat + Threading skill (Force, 1 Complex Action) test. The Force is the desired Force at wish you want to Matrix Cast. When you have finished threading the spell you may then spend a normal Complex Action to cast it. After resolving the effects of the spell skip the Drain Resistance step.

New Advanced Metamagic: Spell Matrixes
Prereq: Matrix Casting

You may now prepare a number of Threaded spells equal to your Initiation Grade. When you do so those spells remain "locked" in that slot until you change it by making another Threading check. You can repeatedly cast spells from your locked matrixes without having to re-thread them. You are limited to a maximum Force for your locked spells equal to your Initiate Grade. If you wish to Matrix Cast at a higher Force than this you must do it on the fly as described in the Threading skill.

There -- Immunity to Drain.



Note: You'll probably need to change the name to something else to avoid confusion with the TM action Threading. I used the terminology to keep it consistent with the Earthdawn Method.

Intriguing, but wouldn't it be better to recycle Ritual Spellcasting for that?

Also, maybe a Sustaining penalty for Matrices you have hanging around (which can be alleviated with Foci, of course).

All I did was reproduce the ED spellcasting method verbatim in SR. The only thing missing to perhaps balance things out would be Threadweaving to complete the spells in addition to Spellcasting.

Ritual Spellcasting is a bit of a different beast. It allows SR magicians to bypass line of sight -- not drain. It has its uses and should be kept the way it is.

I would not add sustaining penalties to matrixes. You are already limited to a number of spells equal to your grade and a Force equal to your grade. This makes it pretty weak when you first get it (no drain for 2 Force 2 spells). It should be noted, since it may not be immediately obvious from what I wrote, that spell matrixes do not sustain spells for you -- just allow you to cast without drain.

I understand that, but they also allow you to pre-cast spells, and know in advance how succesful they'll be, which is significant.

I mention ritual spellcasting because that's also a "slow casting" thing, and generally considered to be not useful enough. So why not extend an existing weak skill instead of adding more skills (that can only be learned with a metamagic, but would logically be in the Sorcery group already).

I wasn't clear again. This stuff is second nature to me but probably not to SR-only fans. Threading forces you to choose a Force for the spell but it doesn't actually resolve the spell. You still need to follow all the steps for Spellcasting except that there is an extra step in front (Threading) and one less at the end (Drain). You don't know how successful your casting will be until you roll your Spellcasting.

How is Ritual Spellcasting weak? Didn't Dumpshock determine that you could use it to kill just about anybody you want no matter where they are? Or did I misremember that one? The big advantage to Ritual Spellcasting is the ability to share drain and completely remove the Range limitations. It has its place as does Threading. I don't see the need to boost Ritual Spellcasting anymore than it already has been.

Considering that this is pretty advanced knowledge I have no qualms requiring a new Active Skill for its use (which is also present in ED). That is the cost of casting spells without Drain. This was developed late in the Magic cycle as a protection against Horrors -- not against drain. That was just a happy coincedence. The downside is that it is slow and inflexible. Requiring 2 metamagics is a way of forcing a player to work for it instead of just saying "eh, I don't like any of the other options so I'll just take Threading." Feel free to remove that if you want.

How on earth is this an advantage, "yea we can all pass out/die from drain, isn't that cool".

Check again. Drain is not "X for the spell divided by Y participants" each it's X drain per each of Y participants.

"Shared drain" means all members have to resist the huge DV, not spreading the DV around.

My mistake. I probably mixed it up with one of the other dozen fictional ritual spellcasting systems I've learned over the years (lol). It still lets you cast outside of your LOS (at astral spotter range). That's a pretty big advantage.

In theory yes its a great advantage, it just not something that's useful in most runs and as such it's not that valuable to a PC mage(who's allready low on points in chargen even when not getting ritual casting at all.)

If you are a Magician and want to make use of Ritual Sorcery your best bet is to take a group contact. A magical group, you can use it for discouts on initiation and also with a decent loyalty rating you can sometimes get people to help in ritual castings.

Misery loves company.

"Whoever said that? I like my misery the same way I like a hunk of meat. No company, no conversation, just me and something raw to chew on." -Basil the dragon

Read it again when I got home last night. It lets you make a teamwork test on Spellcasting test. That is something that you cannot do without Ritual Sorcery. Note that this is the only way you can get any sort of Teamwork on an attack test short of Take Aim sort of filling in and GM lenience.

Regardless, I think that Ritual Casting has enough advantages to not need "Immunity to Drain" tacked onto it. If your opinions differ that's fine -- go ahead and change Ritual Casting. I was just providing a suggestion for the OP.

Why the fuck am I listed under Pattyhulez friends?

cuz he/she likes you lots?