I've noticed before that War! gets a lot of guff, but only recently took an interest in the perception of it. I chose the wrong thread to start that discussion in, so I'm picking it up here.



I was then asked for references to my claims.

Here we go:
For tougher opposition, I was talking about the meanest vehicle in the game: the Aztechnology Cuanmitztli main battle tank, which is followed by many more of the toughest vehicles in the game (Strictly speaking, there's one main battle tank in MilSpecTech that gets second place for the title of "meanest").
There is also the Aesir weapons satellite. Normal players can't afford these things, but a GM can use them. Some may say these weapons are overkill, and in most games they'd be right, but if everyone's powergaming, these may be necessary since there are builds that can kill that tank in 1 IP (or even one hit) from chargen.

As for "At least now you can't get any item listed in any book you want (restricted gear) at chargen", most of the stuff in War! is over 20 availability. Now I have something to do with my cash other than hoard it for delta grade synaptic boosters.

I'm pretty sure no one's complaining about the tanks. It's the MRSI, and the weird spells, and the device creep, and the weapon mod/ammo creep, etc. It's your basic splatbook issues, excepts it's also mil-grade. No, it's not really a problem… as long as no one gets any of it.

When used properly, most of the stuff in War! is used properly. Admittedly there are things in the book that are a little...odd, it just doesn't seem like it would in the rational world.

If characters at a street level were getting their hands on battle rifles, yeah that's going to cause a problem.

Frankly, War! is more accessible for the average player than books like Mil Spec Tech where stuff is just so expensive and so out-there that most players cant touch the stuff.

I think the major issue was that it was promoted as "War! as done in the Sixth World", and turned into "Target: Bogota" or some such. At least, that's my read from it. Which was, admittedly, done in an ER Waiting Room, so I was a bit distracted.

Oh, and no map of Bogota.

Yes it is, but do we have do repeat this Discussion ?
Its already been dozens of Pages .....

Hough !
Medicineman

There are some components of War! that are usable and useful (and which I appreciate - though they often need some patching up), but I think there is a consensus that it represents a low point in recently produced shadowrun material. Egregious misses (no maps), awkward focus (too little war in a book called War!), production mistakes (table entries missing), mechanical inconsistencies (ballast tanks galore), and some plain broken things (the slow spell is monumentally bad). Considering the rich potential for the subject, it was a disappointment.

Generally speaking a bunch of the crunch is unnecessary. The Battle Rifle for instance which really is an old designation you rarely hear anymore except as a historical reference used to refer to the first generation of selective fire rifles, more commonly known as assault rifles. Now we have completely man portable weapons doing more damage than a Medium Machine Gun. While I appreciate the attempt to inject some correlation of caliber into the game the fact remains that without a complete revamp of the entire firearms catalog all it did was create a category of uber weapons which make no sense when taken as part of the whole. Also the new ammo types and spells are really reaching. Lastly I wanted a book about WAR in the 2070's not a book about A WAR. Big difference between the two. How are battlefield formations affected by the presence of TACC Nets, vastly superior communications, immediate satellite or drone information availability, smart guns, smart munitions for firearms (I was hoping to see these but alas no, I mean we can do it to a 25mm munition today, you think by 2070 we could do it with a bullet sized item, gee whiz thanks for that sensor round), and finally an extrapolation of what it all means to strategic and tactical operations. I hoped to see the book I have hoped to see in many game systems, a book about the conduct of WAR, a War made simple book touching on larger concepts and working its way down. Fortunately I don't need that book, but sometimes it would be nice to have something handy to hand to your players who may not have spent the better part of a decade dealing with it IRL. Instead an adventure book in a war zone with defective gear additions yippee!

Uh, and what kind of sammies needs battletanks to put them down, exactly?

Weapon sats do not need stats. Those are purely "rocks fall, everyone dies" tool.
Also, I'd like to see those builds.

Right, except you can still get all the other gear you want on chargen.
And it's not like there's nothing to spend your money on after the chargen without the War! stuff.

To be completely fair, that would have been an extremely difficult book to write and I think it's better to leave that kind of thing up to the player's imagination to come up with. How would YOU best use a tac-net in battle? How would YOU deploy drones? I feel like a single book laying out how Shadowrun warfare would be fought is too restrictive of the players. One strong part of Shadowrun is that it's a very adaptable and customizable setting that can fit virtually any player in SOMEWHERE and when you start laying out specific parts of the game as more rigid, you lose a little bit of that. I do think Bogata was focused on a bit much, but it seems to me that that was more an effort to show what one part of a war or one kind of a war would be like.

Keep in mind, warfare is not static in general and even less so in Shadowrun so sometimes you might have a fight that looks like something out of Star Trek and other times it might be a battlefield we would find more familiar and trying to lay out all that in one book and still have it be accessible is a monumental task.

While I dont think War! was a glittering gem in the SR4 crown, I dont feel it was atrociously bad. There have definitely been worse, the most recent Way of the Adept is an excellent example.

I don't think it would have been difficult to write at all. Over the years I have noticed in different games they always attempt to do a warfare based book and generally fail miserably because while the writer might "get it" they have never studied it. I am not asking for a set of rules or rigid guidelines, but essentially fluff to help teach players who are not very tactically motivated to have a baseline set of knowledge to work off of. Questions to ask, how to look at terrain, what to look for while moving through a city, essentially a book of considerations, because expecting my players to read the Art of War, On War, On Infantry, Attacks, or any other multitude of historical texts on the matter is unreasonable just to get them thinking about things they normally may not. I guess it comes down to how cinematic you want the game, if they want to play in a warzone I want to be able to give them the right feel without having to fill in their actions just to get them to a minimal layer of survivability.

Warfare can be static, however the first side which can take real initiative will have the advantage. Moving is essentially at its most basic, winning. If you stand still too long you go from hunter to prey, which is even more true in COIN Ops.

I agree it is not a glittering gem, but I think people would have been less offended if it were named Shadows of Colombia, instead of War and all that it implies it will deliver. As to Way of the Adept, I think it is more of a personal flavor thing. For it is a fine piece of work, in fact I don't think it went far enough, but then I like the Earthdawn tie in, and really don't mind magic run, if I wanted to avoid that I would still be running Cyberpunk 2020, of course obviously YMMV.

It would not be difficult to write at all, just takes a bit of research and some ingenuity. The idea would not be to box in the concepts of war in the Sixth World, but to demonstrate the impact of technology and magic, combined with current Fourth- and Fifth-Generation warfare theories. Which, coincidentally, tie into the concept of shadowrunners (military-themed shadowrunners, at least) extremely well.

This used to be true up until a few years ago.

The larger calibers used in what are now called "battle rifles" were mostly phased out after World War 2, when it was found that most fights didn't need the penetration or range. The old 7.62 caliber M14 is for example considerably better at both than the 5.56 caliber M4/M16, but since most fights in the Vietnam/Korean War era were at short range due to the dense jungle, with light cover, the smaller caliber of the M16 was sufficient. This also allowed the individual soldier to carry more ammo, an important consideration when you have a lot of deep field patrols that don't get access to re-supply that often.

Fast forward to current day combat. The deserts and mountains of Iraq and Afghanistan are a completely different battlefield, with fights often ranging in the 800 to 1000 meter range or more with little obscuring foliage and with tons of hard cover. Additionally, patrols are short and supply chains are readily available. As a result, many of the "smaller" assault rifles like the M4/M16 are considered to be insufficient by many, and in fact a good number of old weapons like the M14 are being pulled out of mothballs, modernized, and pressed back into service.

Of course, the modern M14 looks considerably different than it's original form.

The SCAR-H is a new manufacture 7.62 rifle with the same combat role, and also comes in a SCAR-L (light) 5.56 chambering so the Army can eventually replace both the M14 and M16 for special forces use. (Although more recently, the SCAR-L seems to be being pulled back off the field, maybe the US military doesn't want a new 5.56 rifle after all?)




Assuming you're talking about ballistic weapons, not really. Bullets are bullets. They have not changed significantly in 50 years.

I will agree that Hi-Power chambering is kinda silly, though. It might have been better called "Increased Caliber", and do away with the silly "this ammo cannot be had in anything but standard ball". It might need to take a lot of slots since you're replacing the barrel and lower receiver, which is really the entire "gun" part of the gun. I would not put it at more than +1 DV though, the SR system does not handle granularity well.

And yes, it would have been nifty if open war HAD actually erupted somewhere in the SR universe, and the book had covered full on battlefield combat.



-k

Also, video games have them. What? Don't look at me like that. Video games (and other media) are more relevant to SR4 than reality is.

They're all over dumpshock.
GA with 30 dice in longarms (sniper) and 6 edge with a barret and APDS.
Anybody with one or more ITS Gonryu on full burst
A strong sammy with the Thunderstruck gauss.
If there isn't a mage build that can do this, people should stop giving them so much credit.

1. War did not burn my eyes out.
2. War could have been better organized, play-tested and maps wouldn't have hurt.
3. When complaining about power creep remember this book is about WAR not street running.

In conclusion War has bright spots and I promise if you read it before all the flaming you might be pleasantly surprised.

Well... A Mage with a Magic of 6, Spellcasting of 6 (Combat Spells), Focused COncentration 1, Mentor Spirit with a bonus to Combat Spells, +5 Combat Spell Focus (Requires Restricted Gear)... 35 points in Qualities....

21 Dice to cast Combat Spells...
Soak Dice of 13 (Stats of 5, and Limited Spell for the +2 Drain)

Tank has a OR of 5 (Basic Tank, could be 6 or 7 even)...
Armor does not matter, but we will gve it a 20... Body of what? 36? So 24 Boxes of Health.

Your Barret does 9p with AP9 due to APDS (Me Personally, I would use AV rounds for this, but oh well)... You need 3 Net hits to even Scratch the paint, and I will give you 10 hits, for 19 Damage. Autosoak of the Tank gives you 11 Armor (remaining) + 36 Body = 47 Dice... Divide by 4, and you have just inflicted 8 Boxes of Damage... Assume two shots, for 16 boxes of Damage in Complex Action. If I assume 1/3 Resistance Hits like I gave you for the 30 Dice attack, then you have a soak of 15, so you only deal 8 boxes of damage in that same complex action.

Overcast Powerbolt at Force 12... 1 Net hit against a OR of 6 (I will take the middle road here) nets me 13 Boxes of damage in that same complex action. Tank gets no soak. So, A MAge with Less Dice has dealt equivalent damage compared to your vaunted 30 Dice Barrett Using, Tank Killing Sniper form hell.

Mage must soak 7 Boxes of Physical Damage. Takes 3-4 Boxes... With the right Drugs, he can multicast twice, soak the majority of the damage, still be up, and the tank is Dead... Not so much for the Sniper. Though he will be relatively unharmed.

Can you do other things, on both sides, to make it more feasible? Sure. But at its base, The Mage wins in that Combat Pass.

Hell, a Troll Physad, with a Magic of 4 can do as good, if not better than the Sniper, with Unarmed Combat Damage, Killing Strike, Penetrating Strike, Critical Strike, And Elemental Damaging Attacks. At least, I am pretty sure about that, without running the numbers.

Personally. I am going to shoot that Tank with a couple of Inferno Missiles and watch it just Burn Baby Burn.
Even a Moderate Rigger/Hacker can kill that Tank easier than the Sniper or the Mage, for much less investment.


Oh...... And to keep it on topic... I like War...

gtg, but I'm curious about the rigger/hacker. Do you mean forcing the tank to destroy itself?

Nope... A Rigger/Hacker with a Drone Vehicle armed with Smart Missiles and an Inferno Package. Heat/Fire is BAD for Vehicles (Especially ones with Internal Magazines and/or people), it does bad things to them.

This is the real reason the system should have assigned calibers for the weapons. Most of this is semantics. I think we are speaking the same language but guess what you are calling something a battle rifle, I am calling it an assault rifle, and we still don't know what the real difference is. Another difference I can think of is about 6lbs. of extra weight in the rifle itself, though I would not term the HK417 a battle rifle even if it is a 7.62 rifle.



Actually they were phased out principally for weight and logistical reasons. Lighter load = more rounds carried. Also killing the enemy was no longer the desire, wounding them was preferable because in theory it ate up additional personnel and resources, however anyone who has ever had to deal with COIN Ops will tell you that it usually results in a quick self timed land mine, or suicide rear guard. Give me a round tha puts them down and out.



The M16 is easily effective out to 550 meters or so on a point target and 800 meters on an area target. From experience I am calling the point target a 10" grouping, and area anything larger, and that is with iron sights which is the principal concern. The 6.8 mm would be a better comrpomise, however what started this was essentially that a Medium Machine Gun generally using a 7.62mm round should not be doing less damage than a "battle rifle" presented in WAR. In other words the firearms in SR4 were very granular before and that was fine until someone tried to shoe horn another category into the mix by shoving it towards the specific. All I am saying is make a choice and live with it, I am fine either way, just don't give me half thought out material which does not mesh with existing material, if I want that I will by WOTC products.



I am talking about a shoulder fired man portable selective fire gas operated 5.56mm, 7.62mm, or similar rifle firing an equivalent round as a generally bipod or tripod mounted medium machinegun and doing more damage. In other words with the advent of the SR battle rifle category we now have a battle rifle doing more damage per round than a medium machine gun with a presumably longer barrel. It does not "jive". Lets just be consistent. I don't think anyone really want to go into grain weights, hot loads, and exact ballistics of different rounds and why certain rounds are perfect for sniping while others are not.

"Battle Rifles" are also called "Designated Marksman Rifles" in modern terms (Unlike the Battle Rifles of WWI-Korea.). They're designed to give a unit better range than their light assault rifle calibers allow for. (The US uses the M-14. The Russians had one of the first with the infamous Dragunov, which uses the old 7.62mmX54mm Russian, not the AK-47's 7.62mmX39mm Soviet.). They're what you use when you need something more than an assault rifle, but not as much as a sniper rifle.

And we head back into the area of Shadowrun that I don't like: Lack of calibers.

Well, I think I get what you are saying.

"Assault Rifles", meaning rifles in the 5.56 category, fire mostly the same ammo as light machine guns and really should have the same base damage code.

"Battle Rifles", meaning rifles in the 7.62/.308 category, fire mostly the same ammo as medium machine guns and really should have the same base damage code. Some sniper rifles and DMRs fall into this category and should also have the same damage code.

Heavy machine guns mostly fire .50 ammo and heavier, which is also fired by heavier sniper and anti-material rifles. Again, should have the same damage code.

Really, the only main functional difference between rifles and machineguns of the same ammo class is MGs do sustained fire much better.



-k

Damage Code and Ranges, too—not that range tends to matter in SR.

Well, this ain't a problem if you stick with the guns of the core book. But as soon as you increase the amount of weapons it is getting important to make a differance between the different weapons of each type.

An other are the very limited range modifiers. There should be something like minimal range. If you cross it you should suffer heavy modifiers.
So if you try to shoot somebody with an assault cannon in hand to hand combat you are fucked, while a light pistol or a hold out would be viable.

So that for close quarter combat an uzi is superior to an assult rifle.
Something like that

So now if somebody jumps around the corner with an MP (two meters from you) he has a good chance against someone with an assault cannon.

PS: How the hell is it possible to get a table?

Exactly. Though MG's usually have a drastically improved range due to barrel length not to mention initial velocity. The main difference between weapons outside of round size is accuracy. Accuracy is the killer.

"It's not the bullet with your name that matters, it's the one addressed 'To Whom It May Concern'."

"A stray bullet that hits you is just as deadly as an aimed bullet that hits you."

"Friendly fire isn't."

That last one is particularly True...

The way wars were fought during the WWI, the WWII, Vietnam or, say, current Afghanistan campaign are all different, but they are based on the technologies used. It would kill noone to write a short overview of how rigging, drones, tacnets or nanites affected the tactics and strategy. That doesn't mean that every army uses them the same way, just like the modern-day armies do not use the modern-day weapons exactly the same way.

TWotA is a book full of solid crunch, unlike War!, where most new items make you say wtf.


Against some 30 armor 30 dice are not really enough. And burst DV modifiers do not count when calculating armor penetration, too.
And even if you hit, you're still not punching through all of its health at once. Or, if you can back your words up with calculations, please show me a 400BP sammy build that downs a Stonewall in a single IP on average rolls.

I've been mostly quiet in these debates, but as one of the few that playtested War! I have to say that I agree.

First, the playtesting pool seems to be rapidly deminishing, which is something that needs to be addressed, IMHO. More eyes on the material means more issues caught and corrected. Playtesting takes time and energy, and frankly every group has areas they don't spend that much time on. You assume that if your group doesn't use that much spellcasting (for example), some other playtest group will catch things like the Slow spell (my group spent way more time scratching our heads about Designate, which still doesn't make much sense).

I think some of those that complain most loudly about recent products should be emailing Jason and asking to playtest, because it seem to me like help is badly needed. Ditto for proofreading. Of course given the events surrounding the Late Unpleasantness (namely leaks of confidential materal) I can see why Jason might be hesitant to send playtest drafts out to a larger playtest pool.

But I think some tunes would change if people realized that: A.) its hard to evaluate rules when you have very little (if any) context, and B.) you can suggest fixes, but that doesn't mean they will listen. There are times when I've seen my group's feedback incorporated into the final print almost word-for-word (for which many would be grateful... trust me). Other times you give feedback about a potential problem and the rule makes it to print unchanged. Thats just the way it goes.

I am sorry, I read that as "I think some of those that complain most loudly about the quality of the product they're paying their money for should be emailing Jason and asking for permission to try and do CGL's work for it for free".

Game theory exists. (Btw, basic proofreading, through which War! obviously was never put, exists, too). It's kinda expected that a company which makes games is capable of competent ruleset analysis, if it wants to produce viable rulesets and stay on the market. Playtesting is in no way replacement for adequate rules writing, it's just making sure nothing's off in the results.

I understand, naturally, that writing a book is a huge collective undertaking, and War! wasn't written in the best of times; and I appreciate CGL's efforts to make their new releases better (where present). But should that really be an excuse for such a failure?

If you don't like the products, you have multiple options: you can stop buying them, you can collaborate to write your own version (see alt.War! project), you can complain loudly on internet forums, you can drink yourself into a stupor. You can do anything you want. I was mearly presenting another option: I (speaking only as an individual with no official ties to CGL) think SR could use more playtesters. I think SR would benefit if some of the people who have these issues provided their feedback to the company *in a constructive way* and *before the books come out*. I appologize if that makes you mad.

100% agree. See my comments above.

Its interesting that you interpreted what I wrote as an attempt to make excuses. I was simply agreeing with a point Prime Mover made: namely playtesting could be better. I say this as an active playtester and you twist that into a defense of an entire process, which has problems that extend far beyond anything that playtesters have any influence over.

The irony here is that we probably agree on multiple levels, but you're just reacting out your frastrations with CGL and/or War! Ah well. Whatever.

Well, a problem with shadowrun is the way it is build up.
There is the core book with rules on every subject.
There is augmentation with additional rules on cyberware and medicine.
There is streetmagic with additional rules on magic, astral plane and spirits and stuff like that.
There is get arsenal with additional rules for combat, weapons, vehicles and drones.
There is Unwired with rules on hacking and technomancers.
There is emergance with some rules on technomancers.
There is runners companion with rules on Spirit, AIs, Vampires, livestyle and a lot of additional qualities.
etc. etc
In every book there are also some parts having effects on other books. (Tecnet etc.)
If you go through the manegement problems, it is quite obvious that with this kind of structure the rules will run into problems.
To many additions to consider every time.

Playtesting is in no way able to really prevent that. If you get lucky and got yourself a hell of playtest with photographic memory who is also very organized and knows all the rules it helps.
(Because he is doing your work)
The other way is to make a hell of a core book, which offers a solid ground for any kind of extension (or plan every extension up in front).
All the books are full of little glitches caused by that:
Streetmagic: Latent awakening lets you get around paying Karma for the essence/Magic loss.
Runners Companion: Vampires follow different essence rules, getting also around the essence/Magic loss problem. (Or you might look at the free spirits and the Pact selection)
Unwired: Writing your own programms is much too powerfull if you use it with the rules of augmentation etc. (Considering the fact how easy it is to get raiting 7 or higher while programms are normally restricted to 6)

And war! is just running in the problem, that there are only a few stats for weapons:
Damage, range, armor penetration, fire mode, magazine, concealability.
(Thats fine for 30-40 different weapons but wit more you start to repeat yourself)

I personally don't see the problem with the Slow spell. It's not like its hard to negate it. An enemy mage used it last night and got 4 hits (800kg). The only PCs in the area were an ork street sam and an ork mage. The NPCs (that were moving) were a materialized toxic fire spirit and a child (who also happened to be a toxic magician). Just those 4 alone (including gear) were around 400kg. There was easily enough movable terrain around that the street sam could have started a chain reaction that would have broken the spell. He didn't think to, and instead all but gave up when his bullets were useless, but that's not the fault of the spell it was a lack of understanding on the player's part about how the spell worked (which made sense as he wasn't the guy with magical knowledge). Instead the rigger rolled a stolen trash truck into the room, killing the spell, spirit, and kid practically simultaneously).

Is it powerful? Sure. Is it broken? Nah, mundanes can end its effects way too easily and it causes a major restriction on your own team's tactics.

I did make one minor change to: speed is 1m per pass instead of 1m per second, since it's easier to track when your combat is bouncing between 4 and 5 passes.

Right, if I don't like the steak I payed for, I can go work as a kitchen boy for free (and offer the chef advice on the amount of salt needed, nothing else, and even that only deliberatively) until the chef learns to make better steaks. Gg. Shadowrun doesn't appear to be lacking in kitchen boys to offer advice, it appears to lack a professional chef - and without one, no amount of advice is fixing the problems.
Also, it's pretty neat how you can read my emotional state over standard TCP/IP; could you please teach me this trick, as well? :ь

Again, there's no arguing playtesting could be better. But there's a question whether volunteering to playtest for CGL would make things better.

Well, the topic here is "Is War! Really that Bad?" You pointed out the problems in a particular area, I just noted that there's no fixing that particular area alone without changing the way things are done to begin with.
So yeah, I pretty much am. Sorry if that bothered you; but frankly, there was no way for this topic not to end in "War! drama, take n+1" from the very beginning. :ь

Uh, War!'s problems weren't really with firearm stats...
Sure, if you want to extend such a homogeneous system as Shadowrun, you have a lot of cross-referencing to do. Luckily, SR4 doesn't have all that many books for that to become an impossible task - as you can see, the fan base is fully capable of pointing out the errors with that...


Ah, I see you don't understand the problems with the spell.
Cast the spell on yourself. What's a bullet's mass? Some nine grams. Artillery shells' have masses in kilograms, actually, ones to dozens of them.
Enjoy being invincible while still being able to cast spells.

And that's even without considerations for molecular thermal movement speeds. If I recall, taking those into account rapidly drops the temperature in the spell's target area to around the absolute zero.

If your opponent has no magical support and no way to move enough weight (or no reason to know they should) then you don't need Slow to crush them with a mage. A F10 stun spell will work just fine.



Ah, I see. I guess that's where we differ. I tend to assume that spells do what they're meant to do and ignore any interactions with physics that would make them more or less powerful than written. "A wizard did it" and all that. If I had to take into the account particle physics and molecular forces every time someone cast a spell I'd just ban magic altogether and save myself a massive headache.

Also very nice is the Technomancer Radar. I guess it meant device rating not signal raiting.

@James McMurray

True if you cast this spell with a force of 6 or higher. But what if you just cast it with a force of 4 and you are withholding 3 dices to reduce the area of effect?
Now you stand in the middle of a "move with only one m/s field" Try to move 600 kg through that.

If your opponent has counterspelling support and is a capable sammie/adept/rigger/all of the above, there isn't much he can do against you when you're under Slow. Even if you're a low-level magician only capable of rolling one hit on the test. This makes the spell broken.

The spell is meant to do the following:
Aren't molecules moving? Aren't they objects?
Or are you guessing what the spells should do by RAI, and run with that guess? That's mighty fine, but the RAW isn't any better for it.

Shadowrun players are a special type of gamer. You pretty much can't be too careful when writing up any sort of rules, because if you miss a niggling detail, they will break the game with it. It is pretty exhausting to write rules in SR for that reason, a lesson I learned when I wrote the ward rules in Street Magic. I spent months here and elsewhere trying to better explain my intentions and clarify the language to close loopholes. Exhausting, I tell ya!

The mage himself (plus gear) is probably 150kg. Me and my two buddies are another 450. We walk up next to you (easily inside your 1m radius). One of us shoves you. There you go, problem solved. Or there's two of us but we're trolls.

Better yet I roll over you with a car. Now now only is your spell squashed, but so are you.


I refer you to my original post. If your opponent can't defeat your magic, you don't need Slow to defeat him.



We'll have to agree to disagree I guess. Mixing physics and magic is a bad idea IMO. YMMV

Pah, as if gamers in any other systems are any better.
The only thing stopping players from building Pun-Puns every time is GM's stick, nothing more.

An average human male is around 70 kg, with carrying capacity of around 30 kg. Where are you getting those 150?
Ah, actually, it doesn't matter, cause by the time you walk up/drive up, you're not just dead, you're dead ten times - because the chances were even when you could've shot the mage.

If you pay close attention to my previous posts (just very, very close) you'll notice that I describe a way for a low-skilled mage to be more effective than a high-skilled mage without putting any effort into it.
Finally, let me remind you that low-Magic mages' spells can be resisted with attributes alone; Slow doesn't give that chance, and gives any mage an unbeatable edge against any non-mage opposition (which may mean much for street-level games).

Yeah. Because I will be standing there, waiting to be run over.

Physical barrier in front of me. Boom goes your car.


So yeah. I hit any of you with the good old stunbolt and away you stay.

It is not a "I am invinsible spell" yes, thats true. But it protects you from a great amount of dangers.

So in the end you need 2 Trolls to even stand a chance to take me down. (Or a car)
And even considering this, you will probably fail.

Sorry, I was looking at ork weights, because that's what was in the team when Slow appeared in our game. If everyone is human and there's no terrain aroundm, it'll definitely be harder. I'm not saying it's impossible to set up a scenario where the other side is screwed, I'm saying tat doesn't matter. Replace one human runner with a troll in heavy armor and the weights balance back out.

Why did you even buy War! for your street level game? Seriously, yeah, you're right. The stuff in War! is inappropriate for street level games. I don't think anyone's denying that.



How are you moving away? You slowed yourself, remember?



How many prep spells does your mage have up? Of course you're going to annihilate the opposition if you've got every trick you need in place before the fight starts.



How does slow change that? Stun Bolt is going to annihilate someone regardless of what other spells you have going, and will actually be better if you're not sustaining Slow.



You may want to grab a calculator. 600kg is not hard to get together unless you're fighting in a featureless plain.

I'm not saying Slow is weak. I'm saying it's highly situational. It's definitely possible to arrange scenarios where someone is unavoidably dead because you have Slow. It's also possible to arrange scenarios where someone is unavoidably dead because you have Stun/Mana Bolt. It's the GM's job to ensure that those situations don't happen to the PCs without a long stream of major fuck ups happening first. It's also his job to make sure those situations don't take out important NPCs without a long stream of excellent running by the team.

If Slow ensures anyone's death it's because the GM wanted it that way. If Slow kills someone and it wasn't assured, it's because they couldn't figure out a way around it. Neither of those is a problem with Slow that can't happen with tons of other spells or gear.

It's a bit like programming.

You get one subroutine wrong, out of millions, and the whole program can crash.

Perhaps not so coincidentally, one of the first things I do when learning a new RPG system is try to create a spreadsheet character generator for it. Even if I never finish it, this lets me learn the ins and outs of the rules very well, and if there's a mechanically broken rule it's obvious pretty damn fast.

Granted, even if there's nothing mechanically wrong with a rules set, it can still be broken, but the spreadsheet thing catches a lot of problems.


-k

Trolls in heavy armor shoot the same bullets as everyone else. Actually, only three hits on a test is enough to protect you from trolls, too - even in melee.

Slow is just a spell like any other. It's not like you need to go through a boot camp to learn it.

You're not moving away. You're killing the other guys, because you can get them at range and they can't (and there's a good chance they're not getting you in melee, too). It's that simple.

Slow makes you almost invincible.

Oh, do tell. Say, you're fighting is a street. What are you, dropping chunks of buildings on the mage? Are you sure you have weapons capable of that, and that you're capable of hitting him with the debris?
Or are you throwing stuff at him? 600 kg is far too much to throw in a moment's notice, before you eat a stunbolt.

Slow is not in any way situational. It works every time, everywhere, under any circumstances, and it provides the benefits incomparable to the spells of similar Power. That is precisely what is wrong about it.
Okay, imagine there's an implant that gives you two points of Agility, and costs Rating x0.2 in Essence and Rating x4,000¥ in nuyen.

You can argue that Agility is highly situational. It's definitely possible to arrange scenarios where someone is unavoidably dead because you have high Agility. It's the GM's job to ensure that those situations don't happen to the PCs without a long stream of major fuck ups happening first. It's also his job to make sure those situations don't take out important NPCs without a long stream of excellent running by the team. If high Agility ensures anyone's death it's because the GM wanted it that way. If high Agility kills someone and it wasn't assured, it's because they couldn't figure out a way around it. Neither of those is a problem with high Agility that can't happen with tons of other spells or gear.

But it's still an implant that's exactly four times as good as Muscle Toner. It's game-breaking and makes for a bad addition to the options your players get.

Same goes for Slow, I'm surprised it's not obvious, especially after me pointing it out thrice.

Slow is pretty much an impenetrable bullet shield even if cast at low Force. Automatically, with no form of threshold or resistance check allowed to beat it.

No other anti-bullet magic comes even close. And most other options require high Force to be really effective.

If it had no effect on ballistic weapons, or at least allowed opposed tests or thresholds to beat it, it would be no problem.

As written, I could throw it up at Force 1 and ignore gunfire as long as I sustained it.

Additionally, it kinda skirts the old idea that magic can't affect time/space.



-k

Ah, but you see, it doesn't matter cause a tank can still squish you.

Well, it doesn't slow down time, it just slows down the objects' movement (which is about as skirting that line as Levitate, don't you think?).

Yes, a Tank can squash the mage . .
But if you need a TANK TO KILL A MAGE . . something is wrong . .
An technically, as written, Slow is Entropy in it's purest Form as a Spell . .

@Topic:
No, War! is not that bad.
It's worse actually.
And why the hell would anybody say that Way of the Adepts was WORSE than War!?

Way was written by a single person, as far as i can tell.
Way was written to be exactly what it is right now and does not try to hide it either.
Way was meant to be something to give a bit more to adepts, nothing more, nothing less.

War! from the Title should let us know who in the 6th world is waging war against whom and why and HOW.
Not tell us about one single war. Not tell us there is other places where there is war going on.
Not tell us about places where war has been and crimes against humanity have happened.

Even with your BMI 78 Ork, your whole Team could be caught in this spell without breaking the 600 KG.
If not you should check their weight limits. Even the ork hast strenght 3 only:)
The main problem with this spell is, you have only 2 solutions to break this spell,
1. Another mage, doing counterspelling
2. Breaking the weight limit, which can be easy if u have a car at hand, or quite difficult.

A levitating mage some meters in the air with this spell aktive around him, can draw fire from an small Army without harm.






Actually, most situations dont start with a car within ramming distance from the enemy mage, from my experience. So maybe the mage is casing it when he sees the car rolling in his direction, or is it a phantom car appearing directly in front of him?




Slow give u the time to throw some Stun Bolts, without getting shot?
From my experience, most fights start at a distance for shooting not for close combat, but may be different in your game.



My math tells me that 600kg is a lot if you arent a bunch of obese runners, or got some trolls at hand.


Yes its highly situational, there we can agree. But from my experience, there are a lot of situations where slow IS a gamebreaker. Its immunity to Firearms and more. There is afaik no defensive spell with that kind of power.


So your solution is, forget about balancing at design, the GM will save the day anyway, or he is a bad GM?

Well basically you look at the top of the post where the poster has included an angry face icon as if to indicate they are angry...