Street Magic introduces new Elemental Effects such as light, metal, sound, and water. While the indirect combat spell versions of these effects are given names, they are not given independent entries. This means they are technically custom spells even if their build is quite simple (just rename Fireball and change all mention of fire to sound). So are they allowed in Mission games?

So my understanding is that the point of "no spell design" is "we don't want to mess around with optional rules and GM's judgement call things," and that Street Magic printed those spells the way that they did just to avoid wasting space on 30 "different" elemental combat spells. I would be very sad to learn that they are banned on a technicality.

Good question. I would say that as long as there is a defined secondary effect for them, then yes, they are allowed.

Bull

Hooo boy, welcome to all sonuic spells al the time, ammo piercing with no drawback.

Yeah, that's a problem with some of the elemental effects. Not all of them were well thought out.

But, as I always point out... If the PCs have it, the NPCs can too. And if soemthing starts getting used and abused too often in Missions, that may just encourage me to see stuff like that put in more. <shrug>

Bull

If Sound damage wasn't curable with a Stim Patch and if Silence spells/powers didnt act as armor it would be really good... until you're trying to silently take something out. Mana Ball only takes a verbal componant to be overheard not a peal of thunder.

I'm going to ask before someone else does: where does it say sonic spells are noisy? I'd never use or allow such munchkinry, but *shrug*.

Presumably, there's a Silence-analog for every element? It would probably be very rare for anyone to have a 'defensive elemental' spell besides Silence or Darkness, though.

I agree mostly, but then Sound also has the nausea / deafening secondary effects. Mana ball might be better as far as infiltration, but for times when you don't have to be circumspect, sound is pretty bad-ass


Sound
"Sound hits the target with a wave of unbelievably loud noise and gut-churning vibrations."

Since it's a physical, elemental effect spell, this means it's real noise, not imagined / in the target's head. I guess you could argue it's noise only the target can hear? The absence of any qualifiers should rule that out, but people have argued stranger things, I guess. Also,

"Armor has no effect, but sound dampers and spells like Silence and Hush add their rating/hits to the defender’s dice pool (effectively acting like sound armor)."

This should also mean that Sound damage is noisy, since it's the noise creating the damage, otherwise Silence or Hush wouldn't work.

I (think I) know where you're going with this though I hope my "stop blatant abuse of RAW rulings"-fu is good enough.

I actually don't think Sonic makes the existing balance problems in the grimoire worse, arguably it makes them better. Previously, there was no point in bothering with any Stun-damage Elemental spells since Stunbolt/ball are just outright better. Sonic is an alternative option that has meaningful advantages and disadvantages - less damage, more drain, very loud, but you get the nausea/deafening secondary effects. So now we have two "debatably best spells" instead of one "very obviously best spell." Also, Ice and Light add some nice variation to the P-damage combat elemental spells, since they actually have defined effects instead of Magical Tea Party like Fire and Cold.

True, stunbolt and stun ball are still the go to for knocking out people. Of course sonic also works against drone by the raw hoaryness of the rules. But then again so does electric with it's ridiculous two dice modifier even if you pass the check and half armor. That my friends is why everyone and their brother is using stick and shock and why i'd just rather see damage types go the heck away if I had my druthers. It's an abstract model, stop messing with it.

I don't think sonic does damage to drones or vehicles. They do stun damage and vehicles can't take stun damage (and thus can't be nauseated either).

Well the problem with the sound spells not damaging vehicles is that, according to the rules in Street Magic Indirect Combat spells with elemental Effects have to cause P damage. The Lightning Bolt/Ball from the BBB is precedent for this. Though the Elemental Effect Eletricity regularly does S damage the Spells do P.

Thinking about the trumpets of Jericho P Sound damage does make sense.

Deafening, gut-churning, these are not words that my GMC Bulldog particularly cares about. I already know about the flaw in physical manipulation spell design when it comes to Sound (the other one is Smoke). I have a pretty easy time seeing Electricity doing Stun or Physical to a person, and Physical to a vehicle.

If you want to rework the Sound effect to make it do P, that's your call. I'd probably let it go through as Sonic (ultra-high frequency vibration), tweak the effect to make it distinct maybe have it do more damage based on/ influenced by the armour rating, whatever. By my understanding, that'd cut it out of Missions, but for a home game, it's fine.

Panzerkunst!




-k