You let him take the initiation discounts in chargen? I ask purely for information.

You mean besides the threshold 2 perception test, available to anyone and everyone?

Although admittedly, I was throwing F7 stunbolts around and my GM never rolled to see if people spotted it.

The one time it would have mattered, the only person capable of making the roll was teleconferencing in (ie. video cameras to see us) and I ruled that there's no way he could know what I was doing (I'd been firing stunbolts at a spirit on the astral while getting the crap beaten out of me by a cybertroll*).

*My allies were taking care of him. I made it out a live, but unconscoius (mmm, edge for a dead man's trigger spell on that spirit, as it had resisted just enough of the first one; I love uncommon uses of edge).

How very Dresden of you...

It was a character he'd already made once before, and I allow full use of the Karma system. Sure, it could bite me in the ass if used incorrectly, but what he's building has nothing to do with my problems. It's more the interpretations of the rules. Again, another rule I didn't know. I thought, from what the book told me, that without a Geas or other stricture, magic just happened and the mundane couldn't detect it.

Hm. Physical threat (two physical allies) or magical threat? I'll hit the magical one.

Nope. IMO, the [6 - Force] threshold is ridiculously low, because it basically makes the "sneaky magician" archetype impossible to pull off. As soon as you whip out any kind of mojo with a chance in hell of working, you're floating six feet off the ground on a throne of flaming skulls and blotting out the sun with a cloud of pure hatred. Makes it kind of hard to be subtle.

This is why I like concealment and being completely non-obvious.

"The hell? Is that bird glowing? Wait, no, it's just flying in front of the sun."
*STUNBOLT OF DEATH*

That said, I know it's been discussed having the threshold actually be Magic-Force, such that critters like great dragons (magic 12) can pull off normally huge feats of magic with nothing more than a twiddle of their little claw.

At our table we use the Magic - Force. Seems to work quite well and does allow for the sneaky mage (though no one plays that at our table).

-D

Personally i'm fine with the sneaky magician template being impossible to pull off. YOu have reality raping powers, those are not subtle.

I always found the perception rules for magic to work well. A force 1 spell is weak, but nearly impossible to detect. A force 3 spell is decent, and difficult to detect, and a force 6+spell is powerful, but difficult not to notice. If I were to make spells harder to notice, it would be via a metmagic technique that increases the threshold for the perception test by initiate grade.

I like that solution, it is very elegant.

Half initation grade at best. Consider that there is not much use for spell higher than 8, even if you have magic 10.

If you're concerned that direct combat spells are too powerful in your game, and you don't like the SR4A solution (with no personal interest in debating the pros and cons of that rule, mind you), might I suggest taking the "Force +" out of the "Force + net hits" equation for damage, and saving it for indirect combat spells?

In a way that could make sense, as with direct spells your basically pumping energy into the target and hoping something goes *pop*. But with a indirect spell you can go for vital parts in a more controlled fashion (i think one could allow for called shots or aims in regards to indirect spells, as they behave pretty much like magical firearms).

Ugh, no thanks. It'd be equivalent to taking the "base DV" out of guns and no one has suggested that and the gunbunny has more dice to shooting than a mage has to spellcasting:

Agility 8 (not even hard)
Skill 4 (room for improvement)
Specialization 2
Smartlink 2
Tacnet 3

19 dice, or 16 without tacnet. And there's likely bonuses I'm missing.

Magic 6 (hard to get higher)
Spellcasting 6 (veritably impossible to get higher)
Specialization 2
Mentor Spirit 2

16 dice, tops. And there's unlikely to be any bonus I'm missing.

You forgot the Force 4 Power Focus, or Force 5 Spellcasating Focus (Combat)

Both of which are out of availability at chargen.

You can get a 2 and a 3, for $95,000 nuyen, which the guntotting bunny didn't spend on cybering up yet.

All you need is the Restricted Gear Quality, so, not really out of availability in the end.

Indeed, and this is one of the rare cases where it's worth it to take that quality rather than wait until the game starts to buy it, because binding a focus with BP is WAY cheaper than binding with karma (which is something that's always bugged me, and I think focus binding could stand to be made way cheaper, but whatever)

So it's ok to take away the base damage from the mage's direct spells because "he does too much damage" for a build point cost FAR higher than the gunbunny's exact same damage?

Nope... Never said that. I like the magic system the way it currently is.

I hope I didn't just create an argument by my questions. >.>;; I'm simply looking for the best way to understand the rules.

The mage has plenty of other powers directly related to those high BP costs, including spirits and a million other spells.

There seems to be some... confusion about how the balance between mages of the "cast spells to zap people" sort and people who shoot with guns for combat works*.

Mages can very reliably one-round anyone.
Gun users can very reliably one-round anyone.

Mages have very good, highly effective AoE attacks.
Gun users do not have very good AoE attacks.

Mages cannot be as tough as gun users without sacrificing severely for it.

Mages cannot have as high an Initiative score as gun users without sacrificing severely for it.

Mages get a lot of useful non-zapping-people abilities more or less for free as a byproduct of zapping people. Alternatively, mages who are in it for non-zapping-people reasons can easily enough be alright at zapping people for very little investment.

*you can, of course, make a mage who IS a gun user; I'm comparing zappy mages to augmented shooters.

There is also the issue that guns are detectable by technology and people, while magic is basically invisible to technology.

A mage or adept could be dropped somewhere naked and have a better chance of survival then the same mundane. You can strip a samurai of his gear, you can not strip a mage of his powers.

Background count.

Exactly...
Or forcible implantation of 2nd Hand Ware...

The section about materialized spirits is not the same section as where Immunity to Normal Weapons is mentioned. The book says:

"Physical spirits have the power
of Immunity to Normal Weapons" SR4a p. 186

Street Magic:

"Certain spirits temporarily project into the physical
world through the power of Possession"

The book does not define a limitation to Materialization for Immunity to Normal Weapons. This leads me to belive that any spirit that is present on the physical has immunity to normal weapons. Can anyone provide a book reference that suggests otherwise?

I did not say that other spiriits did not have it, just that spirits from a Materialization tradition are sure to have it. Now the way it is worded, yes, it would also apply to spirits who can exist on the physical plane by another mean (Possesion or Inhabitation) when they do so.

Ahem.

Are you equating direct damage spells to guns, or did you think I was suggesting one include indirect damage spells (the ones that actually do work like guns)?

The former.