A player of mine and I are having a disagreement about net hits for combat spells. Are net hits capped by force?

Yes. SRA pages 177, 182 and 183.

The section on 182 entitled Force says it clearest:

So in short: hit them the hardest you can, or you won't. Right?

Anything worth doing is worth over doing.

Just a point to make that has yet to be made.

Please look at Paul's Reference post.

It is not NET Hits that cap by Force, it is TOTAL HITS (Before Net is figured).

And now back to your regularly scheduled program.

Also, by the rules spending edge on the test means all the successes count.

Though I've seen some groups ignore this as a house rule.

Can you give me a page reference for this? Not that I am saying you're wrong-rather when one of my players asks I just want to know where to whip it out!

p182. "A spell’s Force limits the number of hits (not net hits) that can be
achieved on the Spellcasting Test. So if you cast a Force 3 spell and get
5 hits, only 3 of those hits count. In other words, Force has a limiting
effect on spells—the more oomph you put into the spell, the better
you can succeed with it. This limitation does not apply to Edge dice
that are used to boost a spell"

There's another optional rule pertaining to direct combat spells. I recommend using it to maintain some parity between direct and indirect combat spells. p203-4 If you use net successes to increase damage (may, not must), each success used increases damage and drain by one.

Each type of spell has some extra rules detailing that class of spell. For example... physical illusions are resisted with intuition + counterspelling (not willpower). So read through the paragraphs prior to each spell type section as well.

Actually the rules don't say that, see the quote above. Only the hits from Edge dice may exceed Force. So Edge is a lot less useful on spells than anywhere else if you are near the hit cap.

@Dakka Dakka
Well, which is still damn usefull.
(Here the question we should be asking is, if dices gained by the rule of 6 are also Edge dices or only the once gained by the edge attribute)
Still those can be up to 8, and even two hits above force are nice to have, I guess.

I disagree. What counts as 'edge' dice. Nowhere else in the game can I think of anywhere where dice are segregated into different pools and rolled separately. Is it any die subject to the rule of 6? Is it any time edge is spent on a roll? Is it only dice rolled after edge is spent?

If I spend edge before the test?
If I spend edge after the test to roll my edge rating in extra dice?
If I spend edge to reroll failures?


Quite frankly, there's very few circumstances when this is even useful. Only two big ones come to mind.

A low magic character (very rarely a power balance problem!) who can only manage say force 2-4... and uses edge now and then to get some added zing. (though they typically won't have enough dice to manage more than 3-4 successes regularly).

The other deals with perception tests and subtlety. The test to notice spellcasting or spirit activity is (6-Force). IE: the only way to cast anything subtly at usable force is to limit the force to something small like 1-3... then use edge to break the normal force limits.

@Falconer
Well, it saves you money buying a foci (and Karma).
Having a raiting 4 foci with, lets say, increase willpower is nice, but it will only get you up to 8. Spending edge and you have 9.
Having a raiting 3 foci increase reflexes will give you 3 passes, with edge it might be 4 and possibly one extra hit. So even if your force drops to 3 you still got 4 passes...

It should be remembered that spells with an higher force than 8 a not used very often. So even 2 Additional hits mean an increase in power by over 20%.

But is it really worth wasting an edge just to pull that off... I know what my GM would do... basically I'd have to permanently 'invest' an edge in the stat. Quite frankly... so much easier to just use a spirit of man to cast the spell and hold it on you.

The usage of Edge might get you there. To get 1 hit more than half of the time you need Edge 4. And every ward might make you recast the spell. That might be a whole lot of edge to spend.

How do you consistently get 2 hits on less than 6 Edge dice? Edge 6 is a considerable investment.

This is incorrect. For example, Stunbolt or manabolt are very commonly used at force 9, 10, or 11. (10 stun will knock out anyone with willpower 4 or less).

Also as suggested most people I've seen are using the rule that successes used to stage damage increase drain directly at a 1:1 ratio. (addressing some of the problems with direct spells being so much more usable and drain friendly than indirect combat spells). You'll notice I even suggested to the OP to use this as well. Paired with the above.. the base drain of a force 9 stunbolt is 3... using 2 successes to up damage to a sure knockout will generally bring the drain up to 5.

Two, if force 8 is used... you sure as hell don't need to spend edge to get what... *10* successes?!?! Didn't realize you had such a monstrous casting pool.

Three, sustaining foci are the cheapest in the book! You're talking about all of a 10k difference in cost... all of 3BP in chargen (or 2karma extra to bond a slightly higher force focus).

If that's the extent of your worries, you have much bigger problems elsewhere, this isn't one of them.

That rule was met with well-deserved derision when SR4A first came out on .pdf, which is why it is an optional rule now. It punishes characters for successes, encourages overcasting, and introduces an overly complicated mechanic into spellcasting, which is problematic enough. I don't know why everyone always wants to nerf direct combat spells, just because indirect combat spells are ineffective.

If you're going to house rule, then make overcasting have higher Drain, and limit multicasting by adding things like foci before splitting the dice pool. But I would try the normal rules first, to see if there are any actual balance problems, before "fixing" things.

@Falconer

But for those it really does not matter anyway how the rule is set. You probably won't even get more hits than force anyway.
To get 10 Hits for a combat spell is not that easy. You have BC, vision penalties, wound penalties and so on.

Well, if you're trying to brain someone with a F10 stunbolt, all you need is one net hit. Then, you explode. Or at least start bleeding. But there's also a good side to this: anything on the other end of the Stunbolt is out cold, so as long as you're still able to stand, you break out the zipties and ask your muscle to drag the asshole to your trunk.

Is this in an errata somewhere? We've been running it this way, but I've kind of felt like what you've mentioned is completely on point.

While there is no errata for SR4A itself out yet, the SR4A Changes document emphasizes that it is an optional rule when it talks about it (under the heading THE AWAKENED WORLD).

The rule got updated to optional in the pdf version of SR4A. Not sure how it shows up in the different printings.

Force 10 can indeed result in a bleeding nose for the mage but Force 9 usually is enough since you need one net hit anyways. 3 drain should be doable for most mages.

Irion:
Do you realize how inconsistent you're sounding... that was EXACTLY my point. Direct combat spells are used at force levels where using edge to go over the force success threshold tends to be irrelevant. Your original complaint was people would use edge to increase damage... read back.

Glyph & Irion:
I don't know what game you were playing, but in all the games I've ever played in the most common forces for stunbolts have always been, 7+ (for the magic 4 types, magic 5... typically went straight for 9... using 1-2 net successes for an assured knockout and almost NEVER took any drain for it). The biggest problem then was spending a few rounds afterwards scrubbing astral signatures (or ordering a spirit to do it). This was true whether the character was a combat mage specialist or otherwise. Only AFTER the change did we really start to see people actually choose to be combat mage specialists (mentors, specializations, etc.).

Glyph:
No I remember those threads, and I put in my 2cents at the time as well. I disagree with you, having actually played with the optional rule now (and note I said above it was optional as well!).... it hasn't changed the prevalence of overcasting one wit. All it's done is made it so that if the mage wants to pretty assuredly knock someone out/kill them in a single spell he'll probably end up taking 1-2 points of drain in the process (generally a fair trade... since the other guy is out... and you only need a little bit of first aid to remove the drain!). (most starting mages have ~9 drain dice... so 3 drain is generally 'safe'... pushing it to 4+ is generally needed to make it riskier, once you start tossing in increase wil/log/cha/int spells and add centering it's not uncommon to see those drain pools in the teens)

Also SR4a nerfed all mage combatant spells... look at the changes to indirect spells (when they're counterspelled). It didn't particularly single out indirect spells. It applied a subtle ball peen nerf hammer to all mage combat spells.

Also, I LIKE multi-casting I did it prior to SR4a and I still do it. Braining a guard with 2 force 5 stunbolts (for a mere 2 drain each), generally works just as well... with the off chance that he's far more likely to resist one of the two with the split casting pool. Not much different than double tapping him with gel rounds... sometimes you hit twice sometimes you miss with one.


Paul:
Play it both ways and see how it works for you. You're the GM. I've played it both, and I like the optional rule. (I strongly believe that a mage should be just as capable as a street sam, rigger, or other primary combatant if he's a combat mage specialist... but there should be a commensurate cost. If the mage is always using spells but very rarely suffering drain... you have a problem, and this was our case with direct combat spells).

It singled indirect spell out, since the nerf for the direct ones is optional.

How does that work with the stupid optional rule? That would be 7 drain each while a single force 11 Spell without net hits would only cause 4 drain, though that one is definitely physical.

Dakka, actually no... you're calculating the drain wrong.

Force 5. 5/2=2(-1 drain code)=drain 1! Then add +1 drain for every spell over 1 cast at once. So you resist drain 2... twice. You're far more reliant on your specialization though (mentor spirits, specialization, etc) to pull it off since you're halving your pool. It's really not all that different in the end from a pistol adept firing 4 times per combat pass. Don't apply any net hits to damage... if for lower level play you're looking at 6'ish split dice vs wil 3... you'll still get the 1 net success generally you need.

SR4a: Direct combat spells: "After the Spellcasting is resisted the caster choses whether or not to add any net hits to increase the damage of the spell as normal.... (parenthetical saying same thing)..." Optional: any net successes used to increase damage increase the drain by +1 per point of damage. (IE: using a force 5 with 5 successes is going to cause you a much bigger headache than going straight for force 9 with a much higher minimum drain).

Quite frankly... using the optional rule really only stopped the rampant casting of force 7 mana/stunbolts. Because typically there. We'd see a mere 2 drain to start. Then use 3 net successes to stage things up to a sure knockout/kill.

My drain calculation was correct but I used 5 net hits to damage. With the optional rule that is indeed 7 drain each. Only that way you can drop one target with each spell. The calculation for the large spells was a cerebral flatulence though. You cast 2 Force 11 spells at 5P drain. This will even take out WIL 6 characters.

You get me totally wrong. The issue I was giving my opinion about was: Is it a bad thing, if only the hits of the "edge" dice are allowed to be higher than the force of the spell.
I stated I would actually prefere it that way, because it would close some "tricks" and actually would not nerf anything else.

If you use Edge dice to re-roll the dice that didn't get hits, I assume the cap on total hits would still apply. When you add Edge after the dice roll, the Edge dice are the only ones that the Rule of Six applies to, and only their hits would be allowed to exceed the normal cap of spell Force.

The gray area is when Edge is declared before rolling the dice, when all dice are subject to the Rule of Six. Since earlier in the rules, it says "The Rule of Six only applies to tests made with Edge dice," you could argue that the entire dice pool effectively becomes Edge dice. On the other hand, the description of using Edge this way says "All dice (not just Edge dice) rolled on this test are subject to the Rule of Six". So either they are merely explaining that the entire dice pool is subject to the Rule of Six, or they are differentiating between the two types of dice even though they are treated the same way.

So in the end, it comes down to a GM call. If you treat all of the dice rolled like Edge dice, then Edge used in spellcasting will be very significant. If you don't, then be sure to either use different-looking dice for Edge, or roll the two parts of the dice pool separately.

I'll let my players make the call. As a GM I can live with the rules as is or modify them as we see fit as a group.

Treating other dice in the same way as edge dice does not make them edge dice.