That is like saying X isn't broken cos I can still kill it with a nuclear bomb.

ANYTHING that can just stop an attack cold, with no resistance or threshold allowed to defeat it, it is inherently broken.

Other bullet shields either modify the resistance test, or provide some numerical threshold that an attack must defeat to penetrate, and generally the bigger the attack the higher the rating or force of shield is needed to protect against it.

Even an armored bunker allows for some test to penetrate. Slow does not.

Slow just completely bypasses Shadowrun attack/defense mechanics. It does not fit. It is like something written for some other game system.



-k

That, and the snarky/angry tone *everywhere* in the thread.

So. I'm glad we answered this question for longbowrocks. It's his job to have every old debate replayed, because he wasn't here the first (million) times. It's good to periodically recheck our settled conventional wisdom… and to be shown that we were indeed right the last time.

would you guys rule that it affected lasers, or HE grenades, or flamethrowers, or tear gas, or any other form of smoke if it did, as explosions generate large amounts of heat, and pressure, neither of which would necessarily be stopped, so a HE missile or grenade would likely be able to take out the hapless mage who cannot dodge because he cannot move quickly to the side. Chemicals don't have to be moving at any quick rate of speed to be effective, bullets may be utterly stopped but that just leaves alternate weapons, even if a motorcycle/car isn't available.

The Spelll also covers explosions iirc.

So Lasers would be an option.

To repeat words from above, 'aren't photons objects?'

… No. Magic is magic, and bad spell ideas are bad spell ideas.

I'm talking about the Troll himself, and his weight.



If the GM says "we're having a street level campaign" and then says "sure, grab stuff from War!" there'sa disconnect.


Can't argue with that logic. Oh wait, sure I can. They don't have to get you in melee, they just have to move stuff within the radius of your spell. If you make it incredibly tight then yes, they will get you in melee. If you make it really wide then they'll have more nearby terrain to use.



LOL. Tell that to the dead mage from last night. She was almost invincible until the team took a moment to think and work together, then she died.



Why are we fighting in the street? Why didn't I bring magical backup or friends?

In any case, if I can't kill him, I run. If I can't run, the GM wanted me dead anyway and no amount of bitching about Slow is going to stop it from happening.

Huh, never knew there was a limit to the number of quote blocks in one post.



Until a high body ork in heavy armor with a little bit of gear walks up to you and it stops working.






A tank is waaay into the realm of overkill for combating Slow. A pickup truck (Accel 15/30, Body 14) will hit the mage for 28P (half impact).



I was going by the SR4A weight table. An average ork (Body 6, Strength 5) weighs 128kg. A team of them will easily break 600kg in their underoos.



It only takes a car if you're in a place with no usable terrain. If that's the case then either the team planned very well or the GM planned poorly.

How does an invincible target draw fire? What sort of army continuously fires at one guy that they can't possibly hurt and ignores all other foes? And what sort of army doesn't have magical backup?



I have no idea, we're talking about a nebulous situation. Again, if the spell is unstoppable in the situation then either the GM screwed up or the players rocked out in their planning.



If your Stun Bolt (or better, Ball) kills me, then it doesn't matter if you know Slow or not. The turn you cast Slow you could have instead cast Stun Bolt and ended the fight.



It depends completely on who they're fighting, why they're fighting, and where the fight happens.



Then your math is wrong or you aren't using the suggested weights (or maybe you're assuming nothing but humans in light armor with no riggers).


Of course not, but I'm also aware that there's no such thing as perfection, especially amongst game designers. Slow is far from the most powerful thing in the game, and it's far from the weakest. There are practically infinite situations in the game and no way for the designers and playtesters to think of them all. It falls on the group playing the game to decide what is to much.

Heck, the Ares Predator is broken if you given them to 12 guys and have them all shoot the same person in the same pass. Eventually you hit a point where every guy is doing 6+ unavoidable damage twice. Should we toss out the weapon, rewrite the combat rules, or just not design scenarios where that happens?



I would definitely have it not affect energy weapons. Actually, that's exactly what was making the mage so scary in the encounter until she started rolling high on her stun balls: her force 8 toxic nuclear spirit with radiation energy attacks (though he never actually hit despite having 21 attack dice. If the team members that were facing her had owned a laser she'd have been toast.

I would have it affect tear gas, smoke, and other particulate clouds.

If several dozen folks across Dumpshock, the official boards, and RPGnet within minutes of the PDF being available were able to spot and point out this problem spell, there's no good reason an editor at least should not have at least had questions about it. Then again, a lot of folks have questioned if this book underwent editing at all, given the multiple other issues in it.

If you were talking some kinda ambiguous situation where the problem would only show up under extensive testing, I could understand.

But this spell just states it protects against bullets. And then provides zero game mechanics to deal with it, so the only "as written" conclusion is that it just automatically stops all bullets cold even if cast at Force 1 by a halfwit with rating 1 Magic and Skill. That should have set off red flags just skimming over the section.

It does not follow any of the other well established rules patterns set by Shadowrun. Attack roll vs either Defense Roll or Threshold.



-k

One comment from earlier about a lack of playtesters needs to be addressed. CGL isn't lacking playtesters. They're simply not tapping their resources. My group has playtested previous works, and we haven't seen any new work since the RW and DotA projects. We got hammered with playtest after playtest and then nothing. Dunno if we did something to get our funnel of opportunities stopped or not, but my GM hasn't mentioned any such feedback.

Ugh. I don't like magic and anything, but I'm super-prejudiced.

Slow works until a mass of (200kg*net hits) is moving in the area of effect. Find the appropiate density of air, calculate the volume of the area of effect, find mass, think shockwaves.

Hence magic is broken. Although I'm talking about how it does this for a large number of tests across the board:
Easily casting spells at a force over someone's willpower.
Bending light with improved invisibility.
Recharging electronics for infinite portable laser ammo (which works against slow, oh joy ).
Ignoring armor.
Hitting people universally with a picture using rituals.
I shouldn't bring this up though, it's been said before.

This is a nice balance, depending on the result. I like it.

You mean somethink like this:
Higher Caliber
Gun is modified to fire higher caliber bullets then it normally does, this gives the gun +1 to DV.
2 10 shop Weapon price + 2500¥ 10R

Thas what i wrote in to my Weapons&Equipment file about a minute after reading the Hi-power chambering and discarding it as stupid as hell.

@Ryu

Well, a double edged sword. If you do it, the mage uses the spell as offance. Dropping the temperature in a given environment down to about 10 Kelvin.
Killing everything in the prozess.

Even if you ignore that trick with the temperature. You still end up with the fact, that air has quite a low density.
Under normal circumstances one m³ of air weights about 1.2 kg.
If you take the approach for an ideal gas pV=mRT (T would be 290 K R=287 J/kg K)
So to get a mass of X kg you would need a combination of pressure (pascal) and V (m³) of at least X*83230. (If you do your calculations with bar: X*8.3)
Yes there is a point, where the area gets so big, the hits can't sustain it anymore.
Force 1: 2.09m³
Force 2: 2.09*2³= 16m³
Force 3: 2.09*3³= 56.43 m³
Force 4: 133m³
Force 5: 261m³(2hits)
Force 6: 451 m³(3 hits)
Force 7: 716 m³(5hits)
Force 8: 1070 m³(7 hits)
Force 9: 1523 m³ (10 hits)
This was for a mage standing on flat ground. If you have him levitating the figures are doubled. (So the spell would be unsuable for a Force greater 6)
(I did not take into account movement in the solid ground so.
But there is always the possibility to withhold dices to reduce the area of effect. (Yes you could try to move a lot of air, but it won't work very good, because the air would mostly move around due to the high pressure surrounding the globe.)

But like I said: If you take molecular movement into account, you open an other can of worms. (Not to mention a radius >3 is stupid to begin with. You would catch your hole team inside. Their weight breaking your spell for sure. Since it is not so common to get 4 or more hits.)

I don't mind the power creep thats in it, most of the creep is held back with unusually high availability ratings. My problem with War is that a lot of the new rules/items don't seem to be very well defined or thought out:

Battle Rifles aren't defined what weapon category they belong in.

The MRSI grenade launcher has the software loaded on it, but isn't a smartgun, which is required to be able to use the software.

MRSI itself isn't that well explained, can it really be done with a BF weapon, or should you use SA to fire it twice in one pass, or do both ways work, tell us please?

How BF and FA firing modes work with grenade launchers isn't expained at all, but it includes launchers capable of both these firing modes.

High powered rounds give a penalty to hit because of excess recoil, but is it actually recoil and is it per round, or just in general?

Anti-Tank rounds don't define what weapons can use them, they actually use 'i.e.' to describe what weapons can use them. We don't need examples of what can use it, we need a list. Also they're cost and availability is fine for regular firearms, but the cost is way low if they really can be used in assault cannons as well, 1/3 the price of regular ammo with only a little bit higher availability and they're significanlty more effective (actually assault cannons kinda need this so they aren't sub-par to sniper rifles).

The Ballistic Mask specifically talks about being able to use 'vision enhancements as well as well as any modification a helmet can take'. It doesn't have a specific capacity listed and what mods a helmet can take isn't actually defined. Most helmets that can take mods specify vision enhancements and sensors, but its just a crap shoot, there is no official list of 'this can fit into helmets'.



There are plenty more examples. I just feel a disconnect when reading it, like the person who wrote it just wasn't very familiar with the system or they didn't have the other rule books available to them when they were writing it. The other rulesbooks like Augmentation and Arsenal are written in a much clearer and more compatible way, if they introduce a new rule on how to handle something they sit you down and say this is how the new rule interacts with the existing rules, War just doesn't do that.

Earth is moving.
WAY more than force*200 kg.
Nowhere does it say in relation to the caster, right?

@Stahlseele

No, in relation to earth.

The spell is simply overpowered. It is not badly designed.

Maybe thats the Reason why its omitted in the German Fronteinsatz !?!

With a Dance at the Front
Medicineman

Sounds silly, if you consider the german Streetmagic got the mana static of hell.

Haven't used anything in War in a game yet. But I've given a few items some thought.

Slow could be dumbed down to simply subtract a number of power points from an attack equal to the force of the spell and success's. This effect can only be applied to the first attack each turn. Usable until sustain is dropped.

Full auto grenade weapons. I used this rule once and like how it works out.

Calculate damage code as you would for any full auto weapon +1 for each additional grenade. Increase area of effect by 1 meter per additional round fired. This keeps damage reasonable, increases effect and still maintains a serious salsa effect.

EDIT: Cleaned up.

I would just have the target roll for each grenade explosion he is in the AOE of. at the Damage that Grenade created. Easiest solution, And still quite deadly. The ripple effect is what makes multiple explosive packages deadly, not the combined explosive potential. Individual Explosions do not work that way. If you chose to have them all detonate together in the exact same location, then maybe (Along with the Law of Diminishing Returns that that effect would produce), but not going to happen with the Autofire Grenade Rules.

Even easier... The amount of Ft Pounds of Energy that a Bullet Produces could conceivably drop the Slow Spell in its tracks. Convert the energy from Ft. Pounds to Kilograms and you should see what I mean. Of course, that is WAY more information than is provided in the Game, but still a valid conclusion. Your Typical .50 BMG Sniper Round (700 Grains) imparts an Energy Equivalent of 13,971 Ft. Lbsf on Impact (That is 18,941 J)... MORE than enough to handle that Force 15 Spell in a single shot, with energy left over to spare. By comparison, a 230 Grain, HydraSHock .45 ACP (Heavy Pistol) has 414 Ft. Lbsf (561 J). Which will take care of that Force 1 Spell, if the mage is shot twice in that pass. The 7mm Remingtom Magnum (Hunting Rifle) performs better than the Heavy Pistol (Surprise) with 2837 Ft. Lbsf Energy. Enough for the Force 5 Spell.

Simple really.

Good job arguing a sarcastic summary :ь


There's a difference between annoyed and mad, but yeah, k, see your point :ь


The spell description itself says it affects explosions. Lasers, I'm not sure about, but how often do you have lasers in your games anyway?


The troll's weight matters only when he's in melee range. For ranges greater than one turn's movement, that means the troll is dead meat with Slow.

Not at all. War!, just like any other book, just presents you a set a options. There's this stat called Availability to determine what the runners can or cannot get.

Nope, you actually can't. Because to move half a ton the mage's way in a moment's notice requires either a weapon powerful enough to level buildings, a vehicle prepared in advance specifically for that occasion (and then driven under a rain of spells), or someone capable of lobbing trash weighting half a ton.

Right, with a whole team against a single mage you have a chance to win. Except that your team is what, some 1600 BP total, and the mage with Slow can be a pain even on 350 BP. Go-go power balance!

Because you're in a city? Why didn't the mage?

The GM has no obligation to design all the encounters around your team; you're not playing D&D 4E. The NPC mages get the spells the same way as PC mages do; and if a single spell learned turns even a shitty mage into an invincible caster of doom, it's a bad spell. This has nothing to do with GM will. What's not to understand?

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein

Thats not that easy.
I stands to reason, that the spell would still be harder to break this way. Because it would only count a bullet at a time.

If you drop something in the earth gravity field you end up with an accelaration von around 10 m/s².
So after one second you would have a kinetic energy of e= 1/2 m* v² = m*10²=1/2*200*100=10.000 J. (Minus 200*1²/2= 100J/s)

And to make things worse, you have to consider how fast the bullet is stopped.

A very easy way to do this is going the way of a force field.
The movement of every (non-living?) object is hindered with a strengh equal hits.

>walks up to you
>walks up
Which gives you at least an additional turn, or maybe two, to turn him into a heap of ash.

I've already asked you to explain how the terrain is helping against Slow. Still waiting for the answer.
Or do you think that your GM must always give you a lift crane with lead blocks hanging over any mage's head if said mage is using Slow?

It does so by lobbing killy spells around, that's how. Also by being in the way for artillery fire, for example.

No we are not. Giving an opposing mage a single spell is not a GM's screw-up if that spells means that the runners with whatever weapons they have are fragged; it's a glaring hole in the rules. And it's not like runners know which spells the opposing mages know every time.

Or you need several of those to drop the runner. Or there's a bunch of runners and you can't cover them all with a single Stun Ball. Slow solves those problems, all at once.

Except firefights are kinda sorta a typical situation for Shadowrun, you know. And Slow solves firefights completely.
Also, I dare you to find anything as powerful as Slow, power-per-nuyen-wise.


It says "relative to the manasphere, which in most cases is the Earth".


Good job converting energy to mass. Could you, please, now convert meters to volts, and amperes to lumens?

Right, now I get what he was doing.
As a matter of fact this approach is quite easy. (e=m*c² + kinetic energy)
But I guess the kinetic energy is not really important that way...

Thanks... I'll be here all week... Lets see:

Meters to Volts. Movement imparts Energy. Harvesting Energy from Human Movement is possible through Piezoelectrical principles. One footstep can provide enough electrical current to light two 60-watt bulbs for one second. That would require 60 Steps per Minute(Damn Fast Walking to be sure, and at 30" per step, that equates out to 46 Meters) to power the Bulbs for a Minute. In Dance clubs that have been used for the research into this application, initial estimates suggest an individual clubgoer could generate roughly 5 to 10 watts, and on a night where the dance floor is packed with moving bodies, the energy from the floor could supply about 60 percent of the club's total energy needs. So 46 Meters/Minute generates 5-10 Watts, at 120 Volts, and about 15-20 Amps. Done, Meters to Volts.

Amps to Lumens. Well, Movement generates enough of a current to create actual electricity. This electricity has an Amperage rating of some sort (Usually 15 to 20 Amps), So, Because I can use movement to power my 23 Watt CFL, at standard Ampereage (usually 15 Amps), Each CFL generates 1200 Lumens. There you go, Amps to Lumens.

Yes, I know, This is very poor (and largely inaccurate) garage-level science, with no real application in physics (at least only minimal application anyways). Some things just do not convert. Please take it as having a bit of fun, and not too serious.

Point is, everyone gets so hung up on how overpowered the SLOW spell is, and yet, few look for other ways to Impact the Spell at all. It is just a blanket statement that "It is too Powerful."

There are ways to have an effect against the user of the spell. Just like any other things magical, you need to use magic to fight Magic. Or a really heavy Troll with Combat Armor on.

I have also seen comments on the result of what happens when you sap the energy from everything around the caster. Unfortunately, the caster would be the only one truly effected by this, as nothing outside of the field is ever effected. So... Bad for the Mage.

Also sucks for the Mage to be standing anywhere near ANYTHING when this spell is cast, as Everything around him IN A SPHERE is affected by the Spell, and would (should) be included in the weight calculation. I am pretty sure that the Ground/Asphalt/Building/ Car/Whatever else enclosed within the field will instantly negate the spells utility.

Not a really well thought out spell, to be sure. Just convert the spell into an Area Effect Levitate (like it says in the text) with a Weight capacity according to the spell, and it works just fine. Ignore any effects it may have on Bullets/explosions/etc. They make no sense.

Just Sayin.

The Mass Levitate is how the German War! takes care of THAT issue . .
The Nazi-Accountant-Scalpell and going in to fight and loot dead nazis and their victims ghosts simply got cut i think . .
And replaced by stuff that tells us a bit about military units. As would be expected of a book called War! for my sake!

Well, we're discussing just how bad War! is, remember? Sure it's possible to fix some of the stuff in it - rewrite the rules for Slow and Designate, lower those insane numbers in the howitzer damage table, etc. That all is not making the book itself any better.

If your entire argument hangs on one word, it fall apart pretty quickly. He could also drive up, run up, or be levitated up by his friend. Slap a spirit's Movement on his motorcycle for even more fun.



In the scene last night the terrain was a bunch of pregnant women on gurneys hooked to IVs and monitor machines. With the weight the two orks were already providing (plus the mage and her spirit), bumping one gurney into another would have bypassed the weight cap.



Again, why are they shooting at something invincible? I don't care what you're doing, an army that can't possibly touch you isn't going to waste its time shooting at you. If you're truly invincible it surrenders, flees, or dies. If you have friends they can shoot at and they have friends who can handle you, you've just divided the battle, not won it..

Here's the deal: I know for a fact (because I've seen it) that Slow is not an unstoppable force of invincibility. If you want to not use it because it's broken, that's cool. I'll stick with my knowledge, you stick with your belief, and we'll both have fun in our campaigns. However, you absolutely cannot convince me that something I've seen work well is unworkable, and I get the impression I'm not going to convince you, so I'm done debating.

True. A troll that can't reach the mage and block LOS during that time is dead.



Actually, it was a singgle rigger that killed the mage. The other two guys were already down at that point.



Sorry, my games don't have a lot of high noon showdowns in the streets.


If you set up instant death scenarios you're a douche of a GM and I don't want to play in your games. System has no bearing on that. If though, you're not a douche, then Slow is just another tool for making interesting encounters.

But, you seem like another case where I just have to agree to disagree. I know that Slow can work, you insist it can't. I'll go with my experience over someone else's theory crafting any day. Have fun!

A simple smoke grenade, flare combo screws the spell, or pretty much anything else which obscures the Mages vision. I don't get what the big deal is, a party without magical support going against a roughly equivalent group with magical support is, and always has been at a serious disadvantage. While the spell on paper is not very well thought out and probably better than originally intended it really is nowhere near to being an instant win.

@James McMurray

This is quite funny, because you said, that your team surrendered, because of slow. So after your experience slow made the mage invincible.

Dammit, it sounds like I want the German version of War!

If I only understood German.





-k

No he didn't, he said his team killed the mage who had it.

Slow is significantly better than any other equivalent option, without a commiserate increase in either the difficulty of obtaining it or using it.

It also does not follow the Shadowrun rules paradigm of opposed rolls or thresholds.

In short, it's too good for what it costs, and doesn't fit the game system.

That is what makes it broken.



-k

Learn to German! ^^

Obscures the mage's vision? Are you kidding?

Don't get me wrong I think it is poorly designed, overpowered, broken even, but I also think there are ways around it even if you leave it as is. For my games I reworded it to work only on things originating within the area of effect. Something new entering or crossing the area is not affected. So slow becomes more of a directed affect instead of a blanket effect. If I am shooting from outside it, it would have no effect, from within and say hello to the 1m/s bullet. Much more workable, but of course a house ruling.

Oh, I reread it. Yes. They gave up but the rigger killed him.

If you counnt going down for the count as giving up, then your correct

And that means exchanging exactly how many actions for the one the mage spends casting his Slow?

Again, you have to move two orks into the melee range, and add some more weight from out there (and it's not like there's a lot of easily movable mass is available everywhere).

Because fighting back is a reflex? Because you don't know if it's invincible until you try? Because the mage might as well be floating at some chokepoint or other? Spells making mages capable of standing up to whole armies are bad.

Noone said it's unstoppable. It's just overly, hilariously brokenly good - see my example with Muscle Toner 2.0. Again, that makes it a bad spell, and a bad tool to use in your campaigns, because it is unbalancing.

And what exactly weighted 600 kg on that rigger? I believe our whole previous discussion has led us to conclusion that you need a whole team to take a single Slow-using mage down, so far...

Oh, so, no break-ins, no getaways, no gang fights, no nothing? Sad.

If a tool allows me to make any low-difficulty encounter into a deathtrap, it's a bad tool. If that same tool requires me to call the army on the runners to be able to do them harm, it's an awful tool that should not be used.

Of course, a single case makes for better proof than comprehensive analysis.
Have fun in your games, as well.


Uh, visibility modifiers are bad, but not all THAT bad for mages. It's not like you can't cast still with those.
And the problem is that in a duel of two parties, exactly similar in everything but the mages' spell loadout, the one with Slow is at immense advantage.


Most German SR books are better - in editing, content, and everything forever.
You have two options - hating the Germans' guts and learning German. I'm doing both

Sorry I may be missing something. As far as I know the spell requires line of sight to target the area. I have not seen anywhere in the books where it states that sustaining a spell suddenly creates a void in the other requirements, which is why most of the time in my games people sustain spells on themselves since they don't need to keep a visual cue on it. Now I do realize many mages will have optics and be capable of negating that solution, however if I am mistaken about LOS please direct me to where it is explained in detail.

Yes, and they all have Astral Perception.

Must...Resist...Temptation...To restart this argument...

@Mäx
Players tend to not give in any second earlier.

@Faelan

There are always ways around. Even the aspected mana static did not make a given mage immortal. He was just the hell better than any magic opposition.

The point is: This spell does to a mage what binky achieved for 3 BP.

The hell, if you use edge and you have a good pool you might survive a freaking thorshot. (right you would need 12 hits, but hey. Surviving a thor shot in the face is worth throwing 40 dices. Well, as a matter of fact you do not need this amount of hits. since the thor shot would enter the area and would be slowed down. Then he would slowly continue to fall, untill enough mass entered the area to break the spell. By this time most of the kinetic energy of the thorshot would be used up for deformation(or absorbed by the field) of the pole itself. So the depris will fall down from maybe 50 meters. A physical barrier should offer enough protection from that...

Smoke would still obscure on the Astral since it is made up of particulates, and the act of shifting would generally indicate that LOS was interrupted unless he was doing it preemptively, but even then you just walk the grenades in (not literally, an artillery term). I don't see how Astral Perception would be a guarantee.

Smoke does not. That's why there's FAB.