I've checked the rules in SR4A and as far as I can see the examples show net hits being added to the drain code but I can't find that in the text...

Is it in there somewhere? In Street Magic?!? Is it an optional rule I've missed or RAW?
Does this apply to all spells or only combat / resisted spells?

Thanks very much

A

It's an SR4A optional rule that applies to direct combat spells only. Every net hit used to increase the DV adds 1 to drain.

Thanks!

For the record, it's a horrible optional rule that strongly encourages overcasting which was precisely the kind fo non-sense it was designed to stop.

Actually, it wasn't designed to stop overcasting.

It was designed to make safe killing with direct combat spells more math intensive?

What it was designed to do, I have no idea.

But it clearly wasn't designed to stop overcasting or multicasting, as both of those became FAR more viable options.

My fix is better.

All Indirect Combat spells have -2 drain value. All Direct Combat spells have +2 drain value.

Ball Lightning at (2F)+3, sign me up

I fixed that for you.

It makes Indirect spells more appealing and Direct spells still good but with a higher chance of you actually taking Drain from them, which I think was the point of the +Net Hits O-RAW, although it was (IMHO) poorly conceived.

Wow, maybe i shouldn't post at 11pm



I'd agree, I'd like to see more indirect combat spells, and your house rule would do that, the problem I think that your rule kills direct combat spells. Contrary to popular belief, direct combat spells are not really all that powerful. Their damage is less than you would get from a good firearm, and they aren't any less subtle if cast at a high force. There are certainly things they are good at, but I don't feel dealing moderate damage in exchange for risking damage to yourself is a good trade off most the time. With your house rule I'd only take direct combat spells for astral combat...and even then I might just invest in a weapon foci and get the astral combat skill.

@TheOOB

Depends on how you think realising magic works.
This can be anything from:
You have to watch the caster to you realize it ten blocks away.

Thats why I always prefere description over just some numbers. Numbers alone won't tell you anything...

Ummmmm.... What?

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
The rules about realizing a spell do not tell you how you realize it and this means.
So you can't even tell who is intitled to the tests and what it means if they succeed in the test.

Everyone is entitled to make a test to notice magic.
If they succeed on the test, then they notice the spellcasting, and they know who cast it.

What more would you like?

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
On the planet, in the universe?

]
To know who "everybody" is. Because everybody is defnitly not everybody.
Somebody casted a spell in Peking, hongkong, Paris, London etc. I do not think so....

Now you are being pedantic. KISS Irion. Universally, Galactically, Globally, Or even Citywide is moronic in the least, and completely absurd otherwise. You should be In the Immediate Area. The effect will be more detectable, the more powerful (Higher Force) the effect is.

Start at 10 Meters (or whatever you define as immediate area), and extrapolate from there. There is no magic number, though, because each GM will have different ideas on how to define immediate area.

The Perception roll to detect Magic Use can also have other modifiers added to it if you like, Becasue it is AA perception Roll, and should also include modifiers that may help or hinder the attempt. For example...

- Visibility Modifiers (Line of "Sight" to the Effect), Intervening, opaque barriers impose heftier penalties than if you are next to effect
- Distraction penalties
- Active Looking
- Effect not in immediate vicinity
- Effect Far Away

See, you can, as the GM make it as easy or difficult as you like. Area is not defined for a reason. There are too many variable that can be involved. This is one of the reasons we have a GM.

The issue is do you notice the spell casting or do you notice the spell. If I'm concealed in an alley and powerbolt someone 100m away, can observers without line of sight on the caster see anything other than the wound on the target? Is there a back trace towards the caster? No clue by the rules.

It is not about a given number, it is about the point Slithery D brings up. (I thought this would be clear, but I guess it wasn't)
Without knowing how you can "see" the spell, this question can not be resolved. (Is it like the "Mentor-Mask" or light or sound or a feeling or...)
Only if I have those informations I can make a perception test, as a GM.
It is a complete different situation if the perceptiontest is called for if I am 10 feet away in LOS or also if I am around the next corner...

Example: To see that a subject is having a badge attached to his or her uniform would be an easy test.
One hit at most, mostly it would not even call for a test. But this test would be impossible if you can't see the person in the first place.

Sure I can make something up, but for this I do not need rules in the first place. Only one sentance telling: Magic can be noticed by mundane, higher force are easier to notice...

I don´t know what it was made for, but if your group does not use that rule...

You should figure out how many direct combat spells you can safely multicast. See Mentor bonus, spellcasting specialisation, Combat Spell Category Focus, dp splitting rules.

You really need to explain your definition of a good firearm, because a force 7 stunbolt does atleast equal amount of damage that you would get from most firearms and most targets only get to resist that damage with their willpower and even with that rule it's only 4 drain.

You notice the casting according to the description. Only SR4A introduces weird "sparkles" which are not clearly defined as to where they appear.

How on earth is "in the air around the caster" not clearly defined?

@Max + Dakka Dakka
Thanks for the info, that was what I was looking for.

Exactly. A F6 Manabolt with 6 successes (which I've seen very frequently) is a DV 12 attack that you only get your Willpower to protect against and only causes the caster a measly 3 Drain. Powerbolt at the same force is the same Damage with only 1 point more drain - easily reduceable.

A F8 Stunbolt is 8 base DV with only a 3 Drain.

We use a Feeling, more than mere visual cues. Mana is power, and you can feel it as it is gathered and expended.
And yes, the wounds will be obvious, they are wounds after all.

And that is the point, there are less rules because everyone will have a different opinion on that. Therefore, the rule that you can perceive the effect [in the immediate area] is enough for me. That gives me a baseline to resolve the issue. Why Immedeiate Area? Because that is the baseline for all perception tests. From which all the modifiers are derived. I am okay with it being "vague" because circumstances will alter the situation to much to have a hard rule.

So how would you run the NPCs spotting powerful spells in this situation:

PC is a bird shapeshifter, in birdform, flying 100 meters in the air, targets someone on the ground (bird can easily make any required perception checks, due to their enhanced vision).
Bird casts a F7 stunbolt (perception threshold: -1).

Who sees what?

How much of the air around the caster is it? within 1 mm or 1 km or what?
It irks me even more that with this rule change mana becomes mundanely detectable. This has never been the case in SR. It also raises the question why you can see the mana during casting, but not while the spell is affecting the target?

I would give anyone within a reasonable area (Immediate Vicinity) automatic successes (Threshold -1) for both the caster and the target.

I would allow anyone else outside of that range, but not at a "Far" range (Close but still with Line of Sight/Effect) of the Caster/Target a roll, and if they did not Critically Glitch, They would notice (Threshold 0). Using the "Visibility" modifiers, of course.

Anyone at "Far" Range would Roll, and with a Success (Threshold 1) they would notice, again, Using the "Visibility" modifiers.

Anyone outside of that range would not get a roll to notice at all. They are outside of what I would call the detectable zone.

It is very arbitrary, yes, because those "Ranges" are going to vary, depending upon Situation and Circumstance.

Assuming that EVERYONBE in the City/World/Galaxy/Universe gets a roll, as Irion talked about, is ludicrous and crazy. There is a GM to arbitrate such circumstances, and he should exercise that power in this, or similar, circumstances where the rules are left purposefully arbitrary, because Circumstance matters.

So they'd notice the caster, or would they notice "the spell being cast"?
Did they look up?
Are they perceiving that the caster is a bird?
Are you considering the fact that the bird is, well the size of a bird?

Yes, Yes, and the target as well when the spell resolves...
In the Immediate Vicinity, they would be drawn to look up due to the power of the Spell...
In the Immediate Vicinity, yes, the Bird cast the spell...
In the Immediate Vicinity, Does not matter, the spell is so powerful it is irrelevant....



For those that roll outside of Immediate vicinity, all modifiers would apply, so the Bird would provide a negative modifier due to size, yes.

Its not in the rules as far as I know.

There is no mention of drawing people to the caster or the spell. Observers either look or they don't. With a time of 0,75s-3s for the effect to be visible there is not much time to draw people anyways.

But it takes a complex action to cast a spell, and 3 drain can still cause damage, you need 17 dice before you have a statistically insignificant chance(less than 5%) of at least 1 drain from a 3 drain attack.

An Ares Alpha with Ex explosive rounds can get an 11 base DV attack, and a 9 base DV attack for two simple actions, which is before net successes, and barring bad glitches you'll never take damage from it. Heck, a Colt America with stick-n-shock rounds is more effective at taking people down than stunbolt, sure it's only two DV 6 attacks, but each one requires a difficult test to avoid being unconsious, and applies penalties even if they succeed.

Direct combat spells have their use, but I'd much rather use my actions to say, summon a beast spirit to fight my foes, or use illusion and manipulations to confuse and separate my opponents.

As for perception, the Threshold for an Intuition+Perception check to notice a spell being cast is 6-Force. If the spell is force 6+, anyone who has any dice on said test can notice it. Luckily perception modifiers for distance, concealments, and full cover tend to make it so only people in your immediate vicinity notice the spell, but you can also see if a passerby would have any dice left by simply applying the appropriate modifiers to their rolls.

That test is anythink but difficult, even the most basic of mooks pass it everytime on avarage rolls.

Except that anyone in the vicinity GETS TO MAKE A ROLL, regardless of whether they are LOOKING or NOT. And at a Threshold of -1 (The stipulated Spell cast at Force 7), EVERYONE in the Immediate Vicinity WILL NOTICE IT, no roll required. Thus they are Drawn to notice it, they cannot help it. At that power level, it is immediately obvious, and no roll is required at all, PER THE RULES (Immediately Obvious things require no roll).

The book also says this:

The problem is negative thresholds are not defined in the rules. The other thing is line of sight. Even if there is a pink elephant in the room, anyone who looks the other way will not see it, even if they are standing right next to it. The rules say nothing about compelling observers to turn in the direction of the elephant/magician.
Without directionality any obstruction between the magician and the observer will make a vsual perception roll impossible, no matter how easy it is. The same goes for Invisibility spells, if they are cast earlier. I'm not sure, what a mask spell will do.

While it is true that immediately obvious things don't require a roll, noticing magic explicitly requires a roll, even if it is a ridiculously easy one. People can only not glitch critically if you define negative thresholds as giving the observer hits. There is no basis in the rues for such a procedure. You could just as well say Threshold 0 and below are Success tests.

Drat, ninja'ed by Draco18s.

Except that once it becomes obvious, it's Obvious and no roll is required any more. So once you hit Force 6, there is no longer any need to roll for those in the immediate area.

So how is about hose at long and extreme range? Do they still roll against a threshold of 0, with applicable penalties?
How's about if the penalties for the observer in the immediate vincinity are already big enough to nullify his DP alltogether?

Where does the book say that a perception test with threshold -1 (or 0) is obvious?

No, you need 12 dice to buy 3 successes.

(emphasis mine)

True, but only if the GM allows it. The guideline is that buying hits should only be used in non stressful situations. Combat rarely is that.

Considering that I've built mages with less than ideal point expenditure (that is, throwing points at being a shapeshifter) and still pulled off F7 and F9 stunbolts without ever taking drain; only 14 dice (5 Cha, 7 Wil (or vice versa?) and 2 for the fetish).

On the other hand, I have gotten 1 or 2 hit F7 stunbolts. After spending Edge to reroll.....
(No really, I had a stunbolt that got 1 hit after rerolling failures, and my starting pool wasn't small! 6 magic + 4 spellcasting + 1 foci + 2 mentor spirit, IIRC)

First, the book specifically says a GM shouldn't allow players to buy successes on rolls like that, only on very simple rolls.

Second of all, while I understand that Autofire doesn't change the base DV, it does change the amount the target has to resist. And a Body+Willpower[3] check is not trivial. You need 9 nice before you will succeed that check 50% of the time, and once again, 17 dice before you have a statistically insignificant change of failure. Even if you succeed, the -3 penalty for 3 rounds is devastating.

Third, intentionally misquoting peoples posts to try and prove a point just makes you an asshole, and waters down whatever argument you're making even worse than the fact that you're wrong.

Immediate Vicinity does not roll. If it is obvious, it is obvious. (ie. The Force 7 Spell, that will alwyas be obvious, as the threshold has dropped below 1).

Yes, for those farther away, they roll dice. Depending upon Circumstance, The Threshold would likely be a 0 (The above scenario for "Middle Range" with Force 7 Spells) or 1. All applicable DP Bonuses/Penalties would apply.

Now, something a little more normal. A force 4 Spell has a Threshold 2, ALL Ranges suffer penalties/bonuses and the roll falls as it may. I see this as being the more likely scenario in a game. Once you Hit Force 6+, the normal scenarios have already been discarded, and the characters are choosing to stand out in a big way.

You're Kidding Right. I would call something that has a Negative/Non Threshold obvious. Maybe you would not, but I would.

This is a houserule, because a) the BBB explicitly calls for a test b) nowhere does it say that a negative threshold test grants the one rolling hits. someone can still glitch critically on those tests. the condition for a critical glitch is not rolling any hits and having half or more 1 in the roll. this is totally disconnected from the condition to succeed at the test.

Just going to point out the obvious.

Just out of curtiousity, then, How do you determine what is obvious? The BBB explicitly calls for perception rolls to perceive anything, and yet, there is a caveat that the obvious needs no rolls. So how do you reconcile that?

One method (and not the only one) for me is if the Threshold is below a 1. If so, I declare it obvious. Done. Well within the rules. Thanks though.