I think I'm right in thinking that the only way to boost drain D without 'ware is with fetishes and centering?!? Specifically, foci can only be used for casting the spell / summoning, not withheld for resisting?! Is this a SR4A rule or is there something I'm missing?

Thanks

A

drugs that boost the relevant stats would help short term too but yea the choices for reducing drain are somewhat limited, there is a couple of meta magics that would help when used against a mage. Cant remember the details exactly as away from books but its something like shielding and absorbtion or something that lets you absorb a incoming hostile spell and use its energy to reduce the drain of your reply. Has flavour but requires two initations just to get it and requires the other mage to hit you first which is always going to be risky

Focused Concentration Quality increases Drain Resistance. +1 per rank(max 2), 10BP per rank. SR4A p.91
Costly but can be taken right away. Always on and no way for enemy to take it away.

I never really liked focused concentration. Its expensive for that it does. The main reason its worth considering is because its cheaper than hard-capping your drain attributes for 25bp.

True. I don't like it either, only 1 of my characters have ever taken it and that was before I knew the system well.

But it is one of the few ways to increase drain pool. For some build that use high-drain spells(not optimized) or lots of high force spirits it maybe worth considering if stats are already soft capped.

Aspected background count increases drain poll too, but they are really rare. Unless using advanced lifestyle options there is no reliable way to get one, with no chance of taking it with you. Could be useful for summoning and binding.

Still, taking a point of essence loss to get ware is an entirely valid strategy. There are plenty of fantastic things that help mages with drain that fit in a point of essence, and others that help shore up their downsides.

Cybereyes, for example. Most people forget that vision penalties affect your spellcasting.

Yes. For Logic traditions Cerebral Boosters are good. For everyone placelet factories and trauma dampers indirectly reduce drain and other damage too.

I tend to forgot those, since my GM has ruled that drain is only reduced/healed by natural rest. Nothing else, period.

I've used Absorption (coupled with Shielding to enhance Counterspelling) to beef up Drain resistance, and it is very powerful, better than Centering, because it directly reduces the Drain, rather than giving extra dice to the Resistance Test. So, in effect it is roughly three times as effective. A teammate would cast a spell at my PC to allow the Absorption. Our GM required that it be a combat spell that we used, but that was fine with me. At a low enough Force, my PC's chances of Absorbing it all were very good.

There is always the option of having a bound spirit take the Drain, but there could be long-term ramifications to that action.

Most GM:s around here seem to rule that you don't get bonus to counterspelling from both Shielding and Absorption at the same time.
Doesn't make much sense to me, but they where quite intense about it last time i listed out one my characters counterspelling pool.

Well, the fact that any Absorded Power subtracts directly from Drain (From a cast spell within the time limits), rather than providing Dice, makes it pretty powerful.

Don't forget the beauty of Restricted Gear, an R5 sustaining focus and increase Charisma (or Logic or whatever). That adds lots of dice to drain resistance.

No, no. Absorption doesn't help Counterspelling. Counterspelling aided by Shielding helps protect the mage while providing hits to uses to Absorb Force levels from the incoming spell to use later against Drain.

In earlier editions of the rules, you could withhold dice from spellcasting, summoning, or binding foci to help resist Drain. That is probably what you are thinking of. But they changed that long before SR4A came out.

The Focus Will Martial Arts is very useful for Drain Resistance Tests, when not in stressful situations (i.e. when you have the time to use it).

Bye
Thanee

By the rules absorption helps Counterspelling just like shielding does, but a lot of people got up on arms about combining the two, stating that if one wants to use absorption they lose all the bonuses from shielding.

It was changed with SR4A, the only reason you can say "long before" is by saying "it was changed in SR4A and we knew about it before SR4A was actually released due to the SR4A changes document."

The reason it was changed was that people missed the "withheld" portion of the rule and used the full Force rating for both tests.

Apparently.

I was never confused about it, but that's the stated reason none the less.

It only worked that way in SR4 prior to the SR4 Errata. Once the errata came out for SR4, It was disallowed.
Not sure why it was changed, Your reason may be the one.

Yeah, and it nerfed the "normal" Spellcasting, Summoning and Binding Foci - because it took their "unique" ability to resist drain. Now if you want to have 2 of the normal foci, just take a Power Focus which adds to all of your Pools.

Absorption is an advanced metamagic building upon its prerequisite Shielding, but it doesn't add anything to Counterspelling beyond what Shielding does. Initiate grade is added to the Counterspelling Test as per Shielding. Absorption just uses the same mechanic as Shielding, and then uses the hits achieved by Shielding to Absorb Force points for a later use against Drain.

I haven't noticed complaints about this before. It is a second metamagic for which the magician has to pay. Why shouldn't she get a second benefit?

I think (unless I am misreading his post) that Max got complaints because he thought he got to add his initiate grade twice (once for the Shielding and once for the advanced metamagic). It doesn't work that way - they all use counterspelling plus initiate grade; the advanced metamagics just let you do something with those extra successes.

Adds too all of your pools which use Magic, yes. That is: adds to spellcasting, but not to drain.

For that you need a Centering Focus, and the Centering Metamagic.

Right, by RAW both of those metamagic tell you to add your iniative grade in, so by RAW you do get to add it twice.
But people insisted that if you use absorption then it's an different kind of use of counterspelling(then shielding) and thus you lose all the dicepool bonuses from shielding, so if i want to get and use an advanced technique it actually can make me worse at counterspelling then i was before, witch to me is pretty assbackwards.

Uh...Right. Sure.

That makes sense. </sarcasm>



First off, it's not "a different use" as you're still "using Counterspelling to protect against hostile spells."
Second, even if it was, I fail to see how "counterspelling + initiate grade" is less than "counterspelling + initiate grade." Last I checked, those two formulas were equal.

This i agree with, just telling you what i got told.

There's this think called shielding focus, adds it force to you initiate grade for purpose of counting the shielding bonus.

Sure, but a Shielding Focus is not the Absorption Metamagic Technique. Duh... It is the Advanced Form of Shielding. You would add the Focus, even if you were Absorbing, in my opinion, but you would not add the Initiate Grade twice.

This.