I have seen in someone's signature in his DS posts a quote something like, "If a GM doesn't understand the hacking rules, hacking gets weaker. If a GM doesn't understand the magic rules, magic gets stronger." Perhaps a little black and white, but he does have a point. As a GM myself, I worry about work in the matrix, because I don't understand it (not having bothered to spend the time to figure it out), and welcome players' help when we go there. As a GM, I am not the least bit afraid of PCs with magic, and I don't have to go out of my way to gimp them. The world as written in the books already has it out for them.

Sounds like a normal game to me, no reason to get defensive and almost reverent all of a sudden.

1) Use of Edge or not, repeated use of this level of magic will sooner or later kill the user. Russian roulette, anyone?

2) The world in many places is antithetical to magic use, either in its own intrinsic magical nature, or because of the existence of all kinds of technology. NPCs know this. The tougher the NPCs, the more they know it.

3) As per SR4A, page 192, "Magical skills and abilities produce an astral signature on anything affected
by them, which is detectable using assensing." So a force 12 spell or the summoning of a Force 12 spirit will leave a tell-tale signature for 12 hours, unless overtly erased. In a world in which magic over Force 3 is illegal for most people, this signature will draw the most lethal response available. No matter how tough your PC, someone/something in the world is tougher. Every time the spirit (the one whose signature links directly to the PC) does something magical, like Concealment, it leaves the same trace. "You want me to clean up after myself? That will be another service, sir."

I have seen in someone's signature in his DS posts a quote something like, "If a GM doesn't understand the hacking rules, hacking gets weaker. If a GM doesn't understand the magic rules, magic gets stronger." Perhaps a little black and white, but he does have a point. As a GM myself, I worry about work in the matrix, because I don't understand it (not having bothered to spend the time to figure it out), and welcome players' help when we go there. As a GM, I am not the least bit afraid of PCs with magic, and I don't have to go out of my way to gimp them. The world as written in the books already has it out for them.

None of the shadowrun systems are perfect. They all work OK though. If you find they are broken, then a reread of the rules or a question on this forum usually answers it. You will always get a flamewars around "spirits are broken", but personally I am finding that nothing is more "broken" than a sniper, and they exist in the real world, and are as deadly as the game portrays in the real world.

Why would a Nigh Invulnerable God-like being want to serve such a squishy entity? You are absolutely nothing to him, literally. It is sheer hubris on the Mage's part to even think that he has a right to command such an Entity, let alone summon him. Spirits above a certain Power should ALWAYS Spend Edge to resist summoning. At our table, that Ranking is 4+. Some set it at Greater than the Mage's Magic Rating. I like our better. Either way does work.

Besides, Edge expenditure is at the whim of the GM. Spend it is my motto.

A Christian Theurgist begged a high archangel to come to his aid since the Black Magician had an Arch Devil (both Force 12) who he made some sort of bargain with: he prays so hard he bleeds.

Not defensive at all. Sorry, forgot to put a smiley on my previous post. Here you go... LOL!

My friend has a quote along the lines of "Curse you, internet; your lack of conveying inflection has robbed me again!"

If your players are using force 6 spirits willy nilly, they should be on runs with equal difficulty. From the one players response though, I don't think this is the case.

And we can't dodge ranged attacks.

@pbangarth

This is quite a lie. It won't if you have some dice to throw around.

Yes, theoretically the spirit could roll 12 hits out of 12 dices. This would translate into 24 DV. Sounds a lot. The chance is 1 to 500.000.
Yes, it might happen. So after maybe 500 times (Once per run should be often), translating to 5 to 10k karma. I guess with that you might even survive it.
And to be clear here: Everything short of heavy weapon does not call for force 12, force 9 would be more than enough.

Yes, if you go for a BC of 4 and more, Spirits are stopped in their track...

Well, actually not really. The signature is only at the point you activated the spell/summoned the spirit etc.

And a signature is not that big of a problem.
Find siganture, memorize signature and find mage. Well, there are bigger threads, I guess...

Not much bigger threats than when the entire police magical squad is searching for you... you having broken a law so blatantly and with such power they fear you and send everything they have.

So sure you can say he's safe for hundreds of summonings, but it can happen on the first try, and sooner or later it will happen. My experience trying this kind of over-summoning is that sooner is more likely. Maybe I just have bad luck.

And at every point/subject where the spirit uses any of its powers. Yes, the particular Concealment power makes it hard to notice you, but if they do, the summoner/spirit is seriously marked.

Not much bigger threats than when the entire police magical squad is searching for you... you having broken a law so blatantly and with such power they fear you and send everything they have.

...snip...
SnS needs 7 net hits against a force 12 spirit. ( 21 dice)
Not to mention you would need to hit it first. A reaction from 14 to 16 (core book) means you are looking at about 35 to 37 dice.
Thats quite beyond the scope of a starting char...

Anything mundane to oppose a force 12 spirit has to be extreamly powerful.
The only gun, able to really hurt it, is a gauss rifle handled by a guy with quite a dicepool. What would this weapon do to any mundane runner short of several 100 Karma and ware worth in the millions? (And this weapon is only a danger, because the rules ignore how hard to handle it should be in confined space)

Ummmmm... Not really.

ITNW for a Force 12 Spirit. 24
Gause Rifle: AP Half -4

That leaves that force 10 SPirit with exactly 8 Points of remaining ITNW. Gause Rifle does 9p + Net.
So, I net hit is 10P, soaked with Body +8 Dice. For a DP of 20 (Force 12 remember). the average soak is 3, and the Bought soak is 5. This will hurt that Force 12 Spirit, and that is only a single net hit. I am betting on more than a single net hit from a PC gunner who is going up against a Fore 12 Spirit (He probably is throwing 16-20 DIce after all).

Of course, the Spirit can dodge, for ~24 Dice (Dependant upon Type), but that means spirit does nothing else. Otherwise he only has ~12 Dice to React out of the way. My Money is on the Gunner at that point. And woe be unto him if the Gunner has 3 passes. Spirit loses at that point, because he is either disrupted or ineffective.

Of course, in OP's world, the Spirit gets no dodge at all. Yes, the Spirit ashes one opponent; But the others have the potential to swiss cheese the spirit.

Anyways...

Don't forget Edge, which a Force 12 spirit should be using quite liberally.

DP 20 with an Edge of 12 gives an expected 13 hits on the soak test.

@pbangarth

This would be a good point, if the run itself would not be a risk.
So you are about to choose:
2 percent chance to die in 10 times or about 50% chance to die on the run. (If the GM is using force 12 spirits make it a 100% chance to die)

And even with 16 physical. You will edge up your drain test and live.

Thats not that clear for sustained powers. If it is that way, you will get a lot of astral fingerprints all over the place. Still hard to find the mage it belongs too. Nearly impossible.
But it really does not matter, because it would be still the mark of the spirit. So the will need to find him on his metaplane. I would not walk into the metaplane of a force 12 guardian or fire spirit. (Have to check, maybe the search power might help..)

Anything mundane to oppose a force 12 spirit has to be extreamly powerful. The only gun,

In short: A force 12 spirit is an "I WIN"-button only needed in situations of "you die".
If your GM is not out to teamkill the group, a force 9 spirit is enough. This thing is still immune to 80% of the weapons in the book. And here the same stuff applys only with less drain.

Please bare with me, as I am still learning the SR4 system (I am a SR2 vet).


It seems to me that the Concealment Power as described in the core book is way too powerful and would allow the players to basically waltz in almost anywhere with impunity.


Let's take for example, a character with an infiltration skill of 4 and an agility stat of 5. Now let's imagine that a friendly Force 6 Spirit uses his Concealment power on this character. Basically, from that point on anyone trying to perceive that character on the physical plane would be subjected to a -6 dice modifier AND with whatever dice pool left, would have to beat the character's Infiltration 4 + Agility 5 on a perception roll? I can't think of many places that this fella would not be able to get into. Yeah, he probably would not be able to waltz into the Aztechnology Pyramid and a few similar places, but pretty much any other lesser places would be wide open to him. Or am I missing something here?

Now, let's say this guy gets really daring and manages to convince his mage friend with Magic Attribute of 6, to summon a Force 12 Spirit. Let's say the mage friend manages to summon a force 12 spirit (and survive). Now this force 12 spirit could conceal this guy on our example and cause anyone trying to perceive him to suffer a -12 penalty on perception tests, both physically and astrally.

Now, if this I described so far is correct, my question is: Where would'd this fellow be able to sneak into? Worse, with a Force 12 spirit with concealment power, I could potentially turn any crappy commuter plane into a Stealth bomber for hell.

I must be missing something, because this power seems to be too unbalanced to make the game practical. Please let me know what I might not be considering here. Thanks.

In short: A force 12 spirit is an "I WIN"-button only needed in situations of "you die".
If your GM is not out to teamkill the group, a force 9 spirit is enough. This thing is still immune to 80% of the weapons in the book. And here the same stuff applys only with less drain.

What does a DP of 20 and Edge 4 Give you for the Shooter's net hits? Spirit is still wounded. Do that 2 or 3 times, and Spirit is back on his home plane.

I stayed away from talking about Edge, because then we start talking about spirits using Edge, and that's an old, acrimonious discussion.

For the most part, I agree with this opinion. I firmly believe no such thing as an "I WIN" button exists in Shadowrun.

How does this 'win'? It gets two IPs manifested. And the bad guys don't even need to shoot at it. If they have any brains at all, they'll shoot at the damn mage. I just don't see how this prevents a GM from 'teamkilling' the group. (Which in my experience a GM would not do in the way that involved rolling dice unless a team had thoroughly earned it.)

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
You got me wrong.
The gauss rifle is the only weapon that can hurt such a spirit.
You need quite a pool to get over reaction +1net hit. (Would be around 15-19) (visibility modifiers etc. ) (Yes, if the spirit is not able to dodge...)

But what does such a rifle do to your avarage runner? (24 Armor is not that easy to get as is a body of 10 to 14)

I have a human Body Guard... Body 9, Armor 12.

How did you get a human with 9 body? The only way I can think of would be pretty roundabout and cheesier than I'd expect from you, no offense.

Full Borg Conversion... But not Drone.
Unfortunately, he does not have any armor in that conversion *Shakes Head*

Ah that would do it. Yeah that's kinda silly to get body on your limb replacements but not armor, given the armor is generally much more useful thanks to stacking.

I was thinking he was doing something silly like metagenetic improvement+genetic optimization+adrenal pump (or whatever the bio is that gives +1 to all physical), which is why I said it sounded too cheesy.

Anyway, back to your regularly scheduled topic about spirit powers.

Well, he can always wear armor. The capacity slots he had, he used for a lot of other necessary Things. He wears Either 10/6 armor in "Business Attire" or 12/7 Armor in "Camouflage Utilities." These could go a bit higher now that War and Attitude are out.
Yes, the other route is a bit cheesy.

Even with Arsenal he could have gotten himself much higher than 12/7...especially with 9 body but that's besides the point.

I was thinking he was doing something silly like metagenetic improvement+genetic optimization+adrenal pump (or whatever the bio is that gives +1 to all physical), which is why I said it sounded too cheesy.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
You got me wrong.
The gauss rifle is the only weapon that can hurt such a spirit.
You need quite a pool to get over reaction +1net hit. (Would be around 15-19) (visibility modifiers etc. ) (Yes, if the spirit is not able to dodge...)

How does this 'win'? It gets two IPs manifested. And the bad guys don't even need to shoot at it. If they have any brains at all, they'll shoot at the damn mage.

@Neraph
Yeah, which leads to the runners beeing dead one shot too. (Unless the took same real cheese to it. Yes I know, you play after rules no one would even think of, so I guess your PC could easy surive beeing shot at with a railgun several times... But if we go to cheeseland, ITNW does not care about armor penetration. (Which is quite reasonable anyway, because the bullets will pass through an airspirit anyway. So it would actually not be a factor.)

The avarage runner, not pulling some cheese, has maybe 9 to 20 points of armor and a body from 3 to 9.

And the more of those things you combine, the more exponentially cheesy it gets.

Mmmmm... creamy, smelly, Québecois, exponential cheese. Mmmmm.....

Every single thing you mentioned is the definition of cheese. It doesn't mean 'illegal'. And the more of those things you combine, the more exponentially cheesy it gets.

It's not "cheese" - it is use of superior tactics.

So riding around in a segway cocoon with tank armor is "superior tactics"?

Neraph, that's simply the definition. That's what the word means. It's not a choice between 'cheese' and 'superior tactics'. It's the *over* use of legal-but-optimal tactics, *usually* the result of poor game balance and/or insufficient synergy oversight. 'A' is fine, 'B' is fine, 'C' is fine, but 'ABC' is problematic for the *game*. It's a sliding scale, a continuum, but the more extreme, the more obviously 'cheesy' it is; and, as I said, it multiplies as you combine them.

Saying ItNW (= Hardened Armor = Armor) is not affected by AP? Not RAW.

This
... meaning that if the Damage Value
does not exceed the Armor, then the attack automatically
does no damage.

If the modified Damage Value of an attack does not exceed
the Armor rating (modified by Armor Penetration), then it
bounces harmlessly off the critter; don’t even bother to make
a Damage Resistance Test.

Getting Inhabitation Spirits to Inhabit weapons a-la Bloodmourne? Calling rules say it's RAW.

A Bod 1 character can have 32 armor just from it.

When faced with things that look "out of the box" you must think that way yourself to overcome them. It is no different than the revolution that firearms had on "conventional" warfare or how guerilla warefare has revolutionized the old "stand in a line and each side take turns shooting until no one moves anymore" warfare.

It also matters what kinda campaign you are playing. if everyone has dice pools in the 16-20 range, then a 22 probably isn't too cheesy. But a 22 in a average 12 DP game likely is.