I would like to propose an extra element or two to our GM but I want to make sure it is a balanced as it is cool.

My first choice would be Darkness because I have a very shadow/stealth oriented character that will be using shadow spells and such to hide and blend into the darkness. I know several FF style games have Darkness elements but they don't really mean anything other than people needing one more stat for resistance.

If I have a spell or a spirit power with the Element Darkness (or Void) what sort of secondary effects could it provide when it hits? The body penetrated by darkness giving some (non stackable) modified or Void giving some status effect? If I cannot think of anything, I guess I will just suggest no special effects at have it be the same effect as another element just with different visuals but I would really rather it be interesting or different.

I've toyed with the idea of Darkness in a mental capacity, but never put anything on paper for it. My Ideas have generally been a mix of Light and Smoke effects: Physical Damage, half Armour, and a modifier to perception (my original thought was the same as the Blind spell, -1 per net hit, max of -6, but figure maybe light or heavy fog might be a better choice.)

Never considered Void, but I have thought of a Gravity elemental effect. Physical damage; no armour, and reduce any defence rolls made by the target by the number of net hits on the attack test for one turn. In return, the spell must be cast at a force of at least the target's Body attribute.

None of these have been tested, however, and should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

Seems like it'd be Stun if anything, and yeah, a Visibility modifier. In general, I'm not huge fan of the 'special' elements in SR4, even the canon ones. It's hard to make something useful, but not too good.

I was also thinking of darkness as maybe a mix of light and smoke but wasn't sure about it lingering to cause vision penalties or being more like smoke and 'displacing the air' to cause sufficating effects.


I am on the same page with void. I was thinking of void as some sort of Gravity based effect. I like the defense reduction and requirement for body threshold.

I was DEFINITELY planning on making it a stun effect.

[edit: stun for darkness anyway. For void(gravity) I'm not sure if gravity crushing someone would be stun or just physical]

Maybe something like this?

That, I think, would be more of an incomplete possession by a spirit of "darkness", likely a horror, or one of their more powerful underlings. Something not really covered by the rules, but would likely be easy enough to whip up using the existing rules.

*Slasher Grin* Oh but for a group to have... I could just think of a Magician in my group that didn't pick a Mentor, then started having, something starting to whisper in the back of his/her mind when they were really in trouble...

for the gravity/void one you could have it "pull" things/people towards it. If you want to make it really interesting, you could say that the single target version of the spell doesn't actually do very much damage, but it pulls objects towards the target really quickly, which could situationally cause a lot of damage. Would be a lot more annoying to decide the damage of, since it would be strongly based on what/how many pullable objects there are near the target. Then the AOE version could pull all targets in the area maybe (Force-resistance hits) meters towards the origin point, in addition to causing some damage and maybe making people trip. That could be a good combination with a grenade too.

As I said, that would be a pain in the ass, because it would not be a simple "I cast it at Force X with net hits Y and it does damage Z" equation, but I think that the way to make the other elements interesting is to think about the secondary effects they would have. It's kind of funny that they bother saying "though they
should be carefully analyzed and weighed against existing effects," when all the canon elements are ridiculously unbalanced. I mean, why would you ever take light over sound, smoke or lightning?

Because Smoke is rediculously easy to prevent hurting you, sound can't damage drones or other inanimate objects, and even electricity can't do much to most vehicles until you are at the point where you are unbalanced anyway.

And because light can ignite flammable material. Causing potentially a lot more damage.

I don't see why Light can do that. Stupid 'special' elements.

Becuase if you use a magnifying glass to focus the light on dry grass, it will catch fire. Same idea. But magic.

"You have to understand, with my Power, all of you to me are just... Insects." *Uses Powerful Light Spells*

Close to what I was going to write at first.

Whenever I feel as though I've reached a new level of evilness, I just look for the most recent post by CanRay.

You should see what I DON'T post.

Hmm... Imagine awakened sharks that can cast spells using light damage... Frickin' laser beams!

I want to make a Shark Shapechanger Shaman now.

I'd love to. Start posting it.

I think I'm on enough watch lists, thank you very much.

Edit: Doublepost

I've got a Magician at the moment who has a mentor spirit he THINKS is the primeval void before everything ( granting bonuses of the adversary). unfortunately for him, it's the Trickster having a bit of a shits-and-giggle moment.

The problem is that there is precedence for a indirect combat spell that does physical damage even though the elemental effect should cause Stun damage. The Lightning Bolt/Ball does exactly that.

Well LASERs are "only" emitting light, I'm pretty sure you can ingite stuff with them. Too bad you can't make magical MASERs.

For darkness/void/abyss I'd say no armor, but Fullbody armor/Armor Spell negates, net hits penalty for one combat turn. If you want to make it better allow only magic and sealed armors to negate it.

I always read it as the elemental effect takes precidence, and the spell needs to be physical (meaning it only works on the physical plane, not has to do physical damage), and treat all the elemental effects as such. Considering there are few ways to deal any kind of elemental damage other then fire and electricity without magic, this makes the most sense to me. YMMV

@HunterHerner
Well, the kind of damage is also named with the spell. And in case of a lightning bolt it is P for pysical. (Which kind of seems right, talking about lightning...)


There is no real counter to light.
For electricity you can get non conducting armor (and the GM might allow flying drones additional resistance)
For sound there are sound dampers (not sure how effective they are, to be honest) and it fails against drones, as you said.

The Spell Creation rules however say otherwise. Spells with an elemental effect must deal physical damage.

That rule just doesn't sit right with me. Call it a house rule, then (as it likely is).

@Dakka Dakka
Well, thats not that easy, because it is not obvious what is meant by that:
Physical as the opposite of mental/magical or physical as the opposite of stun.
I would go with the former.

It's clear that they mean both, Irion, because they specifically say both. They're just wrong, because that doesn't fit their bad element effects. What a mess.

To be an indirect spell the spell has to be physical spell (as opposed to a mana spell) already. To take an elemental effect it has to do Physical
(as opposed to Stun) Damage. "must be Physical spell with Physical damage" is pretty unambiguous as both meanings are mentioned.

Even if you removed the requirement for Physical damage, according to its drain cosde the stock lightning bolt/ball would cause physical damage. If it caused Stun its drain code would be one less. As it is, the code is the same as for Flamethrower/Fireball and Acid Stream/Toxic Wave.

I think what we are looking at, is that they wanted the drain to be the same and the elemental effects to be somewhat balanced against each other (I know, I know). But if that is so, someone forgot to mention the effects of the elemental effect (including any and all damage code modifications) overwrite the necessities to make the spell elemental. And this is how I treat it.

Edit: And does anyone actually take acid stream/toxic wave? they are the worst spells there are, after all, the base rules specificlly say their elemental effect does nothing.

@HunterHerne

Nope, I do not think this is probable, because the spelldescription itselfs mentioned what kind of damage they do.
Sound is questionable, because there is not a spell, but lightning bolt RAW is doing physical damage in any case. Because the spell description is telling you that. And direct ruling always beats general/description.

My best guess is, that the guy writing the spells had no idea what the elemental damage really does. (This changed in Street magic, because now the elemental effects are written in the same section)
@Dakka Dakka
Ok, than you are unable to make a "stun" electricity spell. Well, that is odd.

_"Jacky"

What I see is a spell that is supposed to do Physical damage, as per the spell creation rules say. Then references the electricity special damage, which says:


So I choose to translate it as the elemental type overwriting the effects. Whether this is right or not, I don't know. But it works in my games. (where fireball is sometimes more powerful then other games because a lot of things actually do catch fire, including characters and drones.)

Wow you nerf indirect combat spells even more than the rules already do. Randomly igniting stuff is not an advantage. Making the lighnting bolt largely ineffective against drones isn't good for the user either. I guess in your world the only "safe" one then is Acid Stream/Toxic wave, as the the spell's description effectively overwrites the continued corrosion. Or just stack up on dice and use direct combat spells against everything.

I'm actually a big fan of indirect spells. But I feel the elements should be more important then they are. And, yes, I know Fireballing an area and then having all your friends burn to ashes in the results is dangerous, it's supposed to be. It makes Flamethrower more valuable. Lightning bolt is still viable to disable drones, and Smoke and sound are still painful, if you aren't a drone or wall and don't have the protection (which many of my players and my NPC's don't).

I also nerf direct spells, which deal only net hits damage on the physical plane in my games (but on the astral and metaplanes work normally)

I am so against making lightning stun... Lighting is capable of melting metal. Thats not stun.

That's true, it is capable of that. But it is easier to make fire that damaging then it is electricity. Hmmm. By the rules, there is no mundane way to do that, so it's something the rules don't cover anyway.

Have any suggestions that work for mundanes and magicians(under my interpretation)? Without losing the primary use of the less-lethal weapons?