This is a legitimate use of confusion: if you don't want your spirits to outshine the street samurai and adept, have your spirits do something less effective so they get to feel better about themselves. Good call. Also, a quarter of the guy's dice? Really? What are you doing, having force 6 spirits confusion Willpower 3 guys with a 12 dice pool?

Also, your point about Visibility modifiers? They apply to melee combat as well. See SR4A p 157 "Melee Modifier Table." If it penalized Stunbolt, it penalizes Astral Combat melee attacks too, so that's not a point in favor of one or the other.

I hate to say it, but poor planning by a GM in regards to magic is the usual culprit. I've done this intentionally with gangs and low life opposition, where the opposition to the PC's does not have magic capabiliy and in both instances the group got hurt badly. I'm usually expecting a routing of the oppposition though.


As pointed to earlier:
1. Back ground counts
2. Spread out the opposition, use cover and lighting conditions.
3. GTMF (Geek the mage first) .
4. Guardian spirits with spirit powers/and or other spirits to detect and thwart a mage.
5. Call in astral back-up. Within 2-3 rounds a KE precinct's X mages could send X time Charisma spirits on top of the PC's. Bounded spirits are a force multiplier.
6. FAT Bac Walls, shrubbery and living biomasses prevent astral intrusion.
7. Wards.
8. Counterspelling
9. Banishment

THis gets down to the fact that the gm controls the situation, for him/her the goal is to challenge players so the players (and GM) have fun, not kill the PC's. Any schmuck can do that. E.G. make a perception roll...how many success did you get? 5. Too bad you needed 6 to spot the sniper on the roof. BLAM! BLAM!
Do avoid doing that unless the PC has really done something to deserve it.

I'd add:

10. Ego and personality. Not everyone optimizes their decisions in real life, other wise we'd all be skinny and rich.

I'm sorry, but I cannot seem to find this exactly in the rules. As far as I see it, it is a lot of strong emotion. It has not so much to do with an environment being purely aritficial like a city.

I also think that wards and backgroound count don't just add means to keep player mages in check, but also add flavor and even some opportunities. They are great to lose astral followers and to weaken down enemy spirits.
On the last run I played, we were told to sneak into a hospital and "recover" something. First thing my mage did was to check for the baby nursery (is that what it's called?) or something similar - generally strong emotion, possibly background count, great way to lose security watchers as long as it's not a domain for their summoner. Sadly, it was a small private hospital, not a lot of magic hindrances at all, except maybe guarding spirits. I'll see, as we have not proceeded to the break-in yet.
My GM tends to roll exceptionally or at least above average for spirits opposing the summoning of my mage who really does not excel in that area, so no big problems with spirits by now...
I've also seen a min-maxed Street Samurai build which made short work of almost any opposition, this does not only apply to mages (well, nobody said that, just wanted to get that clear). She really made short work of that spirit we encountered, too. Force 3 or 4 or something.
Additionally, as far as rules go, noticing magic is a Intuition + Perception test with a threshold of [6-Force], so overcasting may draw a highly visible halo around the mage's head, that takes care of GTMF (like it short) really quick. Mages are also still feared in the public eye or at least perceived as highly powerful, capable and dangerous (Karl Kombatmage, anyone?). Try to convince that hysterical old lady that you didn't just mess with her memories...

Yep. Or just "nursery," but that term also applies to "place trees are farmed," so "baby nursery" isn't a tautology.


Well, here's the good news: that won't last. On a long enough timeline, he really will roll almost exactly average. [Despite common gamer superstition. ;) ]


Yeah, and not long ago, it was used to pretty impressively kill a pretty impressive President. Does anyone know if SR4 carries over the legal Force limitations enacted in the aftermath of Dunkelzahn's assassination?

< Ghoul >"I call it a veal buffet."< /Ghoul >

I don't think there are any HARD rules for Magic and Legalese in SR4 as they were in SR3 . .
Only the soft Rules of the Fluff that in the law, everything done with magic was INTENT and never anyting else.

That's closer to RAW, actually. Granted, there should be lots of places with background count in a city, but it shouldn't be the whole city. The problem with using background count to balance awakened characters is that it inconveniences mages, but destroys adepts. And all of the attempts to make adepts more balanced - the cheaper costs of SR4A, geasa for powers, and ways for adepts - only make background count worse for them, because when they lose a point of Magic, they lose more stuff. I liked previous editions, where adepts didn't lose power points, a lot better.

I do not find mages outpacing mundanes at my table, but we don't meet often and so the group now only has amassed 120ish karma each. Of that, the mage has spent a lot of his karma on increasing low level skills/rounding out his skill set, bonding foci and learning new spells so he has only initiated once to date (and raised his Magic score once).

Full disclosure: I use a house-rule 500BP system with max 300 (60%) for basic attributes, with each att point costing 15BP, or 35BP to hard-max. This 15BP/att point also counts for Magic/Resonance and Edge, so mage characters who soft-cap their Magic at 5 would be the equivalent of 380BP characters by RAW. What with the need to buy spells and foci as well, mages tend to start pretty nerfed on skills, and hence it takes a bit longer for them to "catch up" with mundanes vs the RAW CharGen. Also, I use a house-rule which caps hits to skill*2, so having a range of skills becomes quite important vis a vis defaulting.

I agree with some posters that insta-summoning is a little broken; I use a house rule to make Summoning a spirit take 1 min/force (gotta chalk out that pentacle, right?) so summoning tends to be done before runs rather than during, although bound spirits can be called upon with one complex action and instructed with another during runs. This also gives a good reason for mages to bother binding spirits, which can be a sink on their cash resources.

I discourage overcasting by house-ruling that P damage taken from overcasting is not healable by first aid, the logic being that the damage taken is from internal hemmoraging that will require full surgery to treat. As a result, my mage player tends to save overcasting to the do-or-die final battle at the end of adventures rather than using it as SOP.

Wards are fairly common in my game, but I only rarely use Background Count, and then only with good reason. I local park in the city won't have BGC in my game as a rule, but a church or hospital or R&D centre for black magic will.

I can see that at the 250 karma level when the mage has initiated 3-4 times and raised his magic 3-4 times as well he may become formidable, but for now at the 120 karma level he has not particularly outpaced his mundane counterparts in advancement.

A max security prison got a +2 already.
So a lot of angry people in a small space are able to produce an overall +2.

Now I guss, that the emotions in a big densly populated city would be enough to get at least +1.

The point is, that the effects of BC are in no Way consistant with the "small things" which can cause BC.

BC is from the fluff side handled like: "I can feel someone got lucky here".
But the rule side is: "Mage starting to bleed out of the ears, if trying to cast a spell".

Yeah it is funny if the faustian mage breaks into a church and is beaten up by a pair of "Angels".

But it ain't funny for a mage to have his head explode just trying to cast a light spell during a nightly walk on a beach in France.

It's just a Beach where thousands died within a day ^^

@NiL_FisK_Urd
Similar points can be made for nearly every freaking city in France, Germany and eastern Europe.

The point is: If you really use the Rules as Written on Background count, mages will be useless unless you run somewhere in the wilderness or some small towns.

Nobody wants this, so the rules are mostly ignored. Given mages a huge "gift" to begin with.
And BC ist not only the stuff limiting mages. It is essential for limiting spirits. Espacially summoned once.

Also, background count dissapates easily when the condition is inconsistent or temporary. Some places though got drenched in a condition, like Auschwitz (for example) and the back ground count is rather significant. Other places like the beaches of normandy, had a 1 day of fighting and years of visitors comming to remember those events. Those visitors remembering the day, probably left a low background count of sorrow and fear at what happened there. Now some trail in the jungles of Veitnam where 100 or so VC got napalmed, and then nothing else would probably not have a background count.

Toxic areas always have a background count of at least 1. I define this as an area where long term exposure leads to death, and short term leads to being sick. Now to how polluted the environment is, and if all of a city would qualify, I'd say no normally.

A maximum security prison is more than just a lot of angry people in a small space, though. It's the setting of concentrated hatred and degradation for decades, the very worst of humanity pressed into maximum population density and kept there for year after year. Scenes of human degradation don't get a lot worse, summed over time, than maximum security prisons.


Literally useless, or just less useful?

@3278

Depends on the mage of course. Some magic 4 mage in a BC of 3 or more is more or less useless.

We don't experience problems with mages being overpowered at our table, but we use a few houserules that help some, mostly assuming that technology would be developed to counter mages (in addition to the systems already in the rules). It does not seem like a stretch that if we can think of a few good anti-mage technologies, someone has managed to build them by 2070. For example, anti-magic mines set up where corporations might expect mages to try to infiltrate. It's just Glomoss hooked up to a light detecting sensor with a chemical or explosive charge. Glomoss scanners alongside cyberware scanners. Havenlilies as a frequent office decoration choice. Manahazard suits. Dual natured chemical weapons. They're not entirely effective, but it seems like perfectly reasonable precautions for paranoid Megacorps to take.

We also have frequent wards in our games, spirits roll forcex2 to oppose being summoned, summoners get bonuses for casting in their mana lodge, and we use background count sparingly (though a person's home always counts as a background count of at least 1 and is aspected to their benefit, a very Dresden Files approach to background count).

This isn't just about nerfing the mage, though. We assume that technology has come along that deals with a lot of different things and that if we can think of a pretty reasonable piece of technology, it has probably been invented and can be acquired somewhere. For example, since I thought up the idea in the sniper thread , we have started using "violence suppression systems" (VSS) which are just sound analyzers that recognize gun shots and other "violent" noises and respond by releasing Tear-Gas, Neuro-Stun, or Pepper Punch and contacting authorities. Ours is a very Big Brother world.

How do the "Rules as Written on Background count," indicate that a BC of 3 would be at all common everywhere except, "somewhere in the wilderness or some small towns?" The worst the rules as written seem to imply is that a lot of places around a big city would be BC1, and some places BC2, and a very few places BC3 or worse.

I would weigh in with 3278 here. The arguements for and against how common and Background Count is are based on differing interpretations of the RAW. Some people might argue that the sheer density of population in a city would make BGC 1 common, but I fall on the side where BGC of 1 would still be fairly rare. YMMV.

I thought he said that BGC 1 was common in many places, myself. Which is more than fair. It's the higher numbers than become an issue to be handled carefully.

Well, BGC annoys a mage a bit, but nerfs an adept - its just like deactivating the cyberware for a sam.

@Yerameyahu
True. Unless you play in a european city, beccause of WW2.

or anywhere else except for the USA and Australia (WW2, Korea, various civil wars, Vietnam, Afghanistan, the Euro Wars, Atzlan vs. Amazonia, etc.)

Heh. My point was just that 3278 didn't say what Midas said he said, unless 'weigh in with' means 'disagree'. Over a century of normal city life is probably enough to fade down the 'normal' WW2 stuff, I'd think? The world's seen lots of wars.

It occurs to me that it wouldn't be too long before some corporation decided that the cheapest, easiest way to magically protect their property is to round up a whole bunch of nobodies and torture the shit out of them in the basement of the building on a regular basis. Has to generate a BGC of at least 2, maybe more. Especially if they don't have a lot of magical talent otherwise and this way prisoners serve double duty.

Might use that as a run idea. Someones hired you to figure out where all the homeless guys have gone.

That's pointless. Just use geomancy. Far less of a PR flap and much easier to aspect it towards your magical tradition.

Besides homeless guys are far more useful for secret nano-perfume testing. Or really any testing for products intended for humans.

Or, if you don't have high-training mages, just use those magic flowerbeds, etc. There are plenty of methods for people with resources. BGC is more like magic weather problems, in setting. However, just like evil weather, a Toxic/designated-villain might indeed create a lair with BGC in that way…

Yeah, true corporations probably have easier ways. But a Barrens Gang might resort to those tactics since they don't have a lot of magical choices and I can't picture them going the haven lily route, or a drug lord (though they're usually good at growing plants when they need to). Maybe some Humanis Rednecks, rounding up people they don't like anyway and then ending up with a magically twisted small scale concentration camp as a bonus.

If you're generating BGC aspected towards Gruesome Death, what sort of spirits is that going to attract? And fat chance that relaxing with some drugs won't be fun either, for anyone with even the vaguest smidgen of psychic sensitivity - or if the drugs make you sensitive. I think any place with bad vibes sufficient to reach BGC 2 will have, well, Bad Vibes, enough to make it unpleasant to anyone.

I don't really like the idea of just making most of the city (=setting, most of the time) BGC 1, unless you're upfront about it to your Awakened-players, that basically you're just nerfing them a point of Magic under the pretense of setting.

I can get behind the idea that BGC is a kind of flavor thing that happens here and there, just like toxic rain or WiFi Spam areas - but how often have those latter two been used?

As for "WWII-BGC", I think that when a piece of city is bulldozed, repurposed and lived in by new people who don't relive it every day, that the BGC fades. I don't walk around town thinking "oh, that's the square where X happened during WWII, and that's the street where Y happened" - eventually the past echo fades, particularly when a lot of people come to the area and don't pay attention to the past, but to new present things.

Also, stuff like BGC in a concert, after lovemaking, or in an Awakened bar - these should tend to be advantageous, not hindering, to a lot of mages, if they can get into the spirit of the thing that caused the BGC.

So i will just rule that the random places with good BGC and the random places with bad BGC cancel each other out, to avoid bookkeeping.

That is really a disservice to the setting, in my opinion, and is a huge cop-out.

And, Ascalaphus position is contrary to the rules, however we might like it. All BGC is problematic, whether it's 'emotionally positive' or not.

I have a (stalled) campaign in which the PCs were hired by a street shaman to figure out where her fellow denizens of the docks have been going. Turns out a security firm is using them to 'train' paranormal guard animals to attack metahumans on command.

Not if it's aspected. For example in the case of the Mage Cafe, it would likely develop BGC aspected towards the patrons.

In fact, according to


And the preceding paragraphs point out that emotionally troubled spots are Positive, and hence usually Aspected.

So, going by that paragraph, almost all those "this must have BGC because of the emotion" areas are aspected to a tradition. Might not be the PC's, but that depends on picking a good tradition. What's the tradition for Murder Site?

---

And the mana-deprived areas are probably Toxic, so no fun for the Sam either without HazMat suit...

Fair comment. Looking again at 3278's post he did posit that BGC1 would be common in cities. So I will modify my statement to saying I think 3278's interpretation is OTT, and Irion's position is way, way out there ...

I would agree that BGC would slowly dissipate from a most WW1 and WW2 sites, unless the sites were enshrined and memorial services are annually held. I can see temporary BGC being created during a concert, or after a particularly brutal slaughter or whatnot, and I would agree the BGC would give out good vibes and bad vibes to those attuned to such things (i.e. awakened). The BGC may be aspected and only help those of traditions it were aspected to, so good vibes doesn't necessarily mean it won't hinder a mage's mojo any more or less than a bad vibe BGC. All the same, I think awakened folk would prefer not to hang around in a bad vibe BGC unless they are pretty twisted, so the torture basement idea would not be good corp policy to my mind.

For me an event has to have big significance for BGC to be generated at all. For instance, the site a high school girl got killed in a drive-by might generate temporary BGC because her family and fellow students visit the site to leave flowers and their mourning emotionally charges the area for a time. No mourners, no BGC, and a good thing too, else killing a few security guards during a run would start to hinder the magically active runners ...

I do see what you're at, Ascalaphus, it's just that my baseline assumption is that no domains are aspected to any PC except on purpose. AFAIK, that is, you can't just 'get into the right mood' ("these should tend to be advantageous, not hindering, to a lot of mages, if they can get into the spirit of the thing that caused the BGC"). I kind of think this would be a good *change* to the rules, though, within reason.

I think you *should* be nerfing magic users under the pretense of setting, and you should be using spam zones, etc., and all your players would certainly know this ahead of time.

I think that in normal situations, a city will have 2-3 Traditions that are really the most common, and that places like Awakened Cafes will tend to favor them with Aspect. So that's some of it. It helps for a PC to play a "normal" Tradition instead of an exotic one, if they want this edge.

Then there's the BGC created by intense emotion.. SM suggests that almost all such BGC would be Aspected towards some Tradition, which is a bit strange. I can get behind a Blood Mage utilizing a murder site though, or perhaps a Tradition using orgiastic/ecstatic rites utilizing the BGC at a concert or place where intense lovemaking happens. I can't quite come up with examples for all the typical "emotion spike" places, but SM gives some leeway with the phrase "the same paradigm (or sufficiently similar)".

Actually, this makes you wonder. If (toxic mana-ebbs aside) most BGC is Aspected, wouldn't Traditions that can utilize the most common Aspects get a competitive advantage, that eventually translates into increased membership?



This kind of reminds me of Kult; some postmodern Traditions might be much better at tapping into urban BGC than relics like Hermeticism. Actually, Hermetic magic might be weak at tapping into the emotional BGC - their real strength is that Hermetics are comfortable with wearing suits and office hours, which is appreciated by corporate managers, and they're good at teaching magic through formal education, permitting certification. Good for the career mage. While on the other hand Black or Chaos Magic get more power from exploiting BGC, but don't do so well on the social side.

Maybe even better: you could draw a parallel between Charisma and Intuition Traditions and the ability to utilize emotional BGC; Logic Traditions suck at it.



If you're really trying to nerf mages a bit to bring them in line with the other "classes", I don't think BGC is truly the way to go; I think in general it ought to work (if the player works at it) to the mage's advantage about 30% of the time.

One complaint against mages that they basically don't have to carry gear; they always have their entire toolkit at their disposal. Advanced use of BGC, making choice of battlefield matter, even allowing prepping a place beforehand, reduces this a bit.

-------

In summary: I don't think BGC is the "true way" to balance mages. It's not fair to the concept of BGC as something that can work in your favor almost as often as not, and not fair as something meant to convey flavor, rather than the nerf-hammer.

It will, sometimes, weaken mages. Especially areas of industrial pollution will have Mana Ebbs, but these areas will also hurt other characters, because any area toxic enough to kill the mana will be toxic to all life.

I just got an image of an evil toxic blood insect shaman walking past a playground of giggling children and becoming powerless when moments before he spattered a dozen red samurai and their mages across a couple of city blocks.

How'd that one get out of the chicago containment zone? O.o

Cleansing: Complex action per BGC, BGC reduced (or eliminated) for Initiate Grade hours

Filtering: Complex action against BGC - Grade (min 1) with dice pool not affected by BGC. Reduces BGC for Magic turns.

In any game where the GM says BGC is going to be common it only takes 2 missions for the mage to have enough metamagic to completely not give a shit.

All BGC does is maybe delay the acquisition of Extended Masking and anal rape all the adepts.

Yeah, I have no clue what 'similar paradigm' was even intended to mean. It sounds like they phoned it in with vague handwaving instead of writing rules.

At least they're wasting Complex Actions, you don't get *that* much karma per mission (unless you're allowing special rules), and maybe some adepts enjoy that.

I think it depends on the type of the game. In a stealth mode/info gathering the mage tends to be a step ahead but that could also be how snow fox plays. When the noise starts she is a step behind us.

Malaria mosquito shaman?



How would you stop it?

Bug Zapper and a DDT Fuel Air Bomb?

Vehicular Laser

I've found that most things can be stopped with putting a can of spray foam insulation in their mouth.

High caliber, belt fed.

Pretty much. Riot Foam, the silent killer. Whether B/R here or Craft elsewhere, it's possibly my favorite skill.

So I think we've established that BGC is a problematic way to nerf mages. Particularly because Adepts are affected worse, but also because it can be circumvented or even turned around and used by mages. It'll have its uses, but it's not the real solution. And frenching 90% of your setting in BGC is just a lame way of effectively stealing a point of Magic, nobody's going to applaud you for the brilliant GM you are there, keeping the mages under control so deviously.

---

So what are the specific problems with mages? Maybe with a more precise idea of the problems, we could make a toolbox of solutions that GMs can pick from, depending on their needs. Please add to these if I forgot any.

1) Mages are good at inflicting massive casualties in combat, through Overcast Stunball and the like.
Solutions: fix the scatter/timing rules for grenades and rockets, so that Sams are just as good at it. Make good use of visibility and cover to protect NPCs from AoE spells. Accept that this may exactly what a combat mage is for, and that if NPCs stand close to each other they're asking for it. You don't blame the troll for being strong either.

2) Multicast Stunbolt is cheesy.
Solutions: apply boni for Power Foci to the total dice pool, not to individual dice pools. Do the same for specialties, mentor spirits and so forth as much as possible.

3) Oversummoning High-Force Spirits is too easy.
Solutions: Spirits with Force > Magic use Edge to resist summoning and binding. Or they have the right to refuse to carry out services until some appropriate compensation/sacrifice has been made/promised by the summoner.

4) Summoning is too fast, too cheap
Solutions: summoning takes a minute per Force of the spirit. Summoning costs 100 x Force x Force, so a F6 spirit costs 3600 to summon. After all, ammo costs money too. (Use money values you like yourself; perhaps low-end spirits should be cheaper to enable summoner mages. Or pure summoners get a discount.)

5) Mages have unlimited growth potential
Solutions: this only matters in theory, or when you've given out a LOT of karma over the course of a long story. At which point the entire system gets creaky anyway, after a while you should be getting out of active Running and into Management.

6) Mages use karma while Sams use money
Solutions: institute a Cash/Karma exchange program. Figure out a creative way to establish the current nuyen value of a point of karma, then justify it IC with for example a story about how the mage spends his money on rare books with mystical secrets, while the Sam spends a lot of time earning money with small side jobs.

7) Mages are more versatile
Solutions: Agility 9 is also versatile, especially if you take 1 rank in every skill group and use 'ware to be good at almost all of them. Lower the price of ActiveSofts if you must, and make them available on the fly ("I'll just download Safecracking 101 from Actify"), or on a price-per-use basis.

Mages don't carry heavy gear
Solutions: actually a lot of gear for other characters doesn't need to be heavy either.

9) Mages are hard to detect.
Solutions: so is bioware. With Agility 9, Pistols 5 (Holdouts +2) and a plastic gun, you're also quite hard to detect as hostile. But you can still use lie detectors/Judge Intentions on the mage when you subject him to Enhanced Patdown procedures. This can be countered with a little bit more preparation.

10) Magic can't be reasonably resisted.
Solutions: Well, unless you've got a mage of your own. But there could be more manatech; maybe gas grenades that create low-grade BGC, or implants that act as a lightning rod, diverting away mana used at you, giving you a bit more resistance (for elite troops). But grunts won't stand a chance, but then, they didn't stand a chance against the Sam either.

11) Mind magic is extremely nasty
Solutions: manatech time again. If magical activity is detected near the brain, sound alarm, perhaps inject tranquilizer or Willpower-enhancing drugs. Maybe there should be drugs that grant temporary Countermagic, with awful side effects. Magic is supposed to be nasty, after all.

12) Anything mundanes can do, mages can do too.
Solutions: yes, but they have to pay for it too. And here the Karma Sink problem shows up again; is this really such a big problem in practice? Mundanes pay less for 'ware (Essence doesn't cost them Magic), you'd think that might balance it out. Is this problem really as bad in practice as in theory?

13) Mages dominate the game, because they're played by huge powergamers
Solutions: this is a Player Problem. Smack them on the head with a hardcover book for a few minutes, they'll improve. Otherwise, throw dice at their face, hard.

14) Spell X is an irresistible force, there's nothing that can be done about it.
Solutions: really? Usually there actually is, but you need to think it out in advance.

The more I think about this, the more I'm suprised there isn't a back lash based on self protection against the magically capable. Not metahumans but spell slingers. Think about it from an evolutionary scale. Most people are mundane, They livel ives very much the way you do, BUT think how you'd feel if the person next door can, in a fit of pique over you dumping leaves in their garden, can immolate your car with a wave of their hands? Could read the darkest secrets in your mind or bend your will to be their willing servant- maybe you'd be compelled, or maybe you wouldn't even know you were being influenced.

You'd feel threatened by those people, you'd feel like you were being left behind evolutionary and you might want to try another line of Darwinism.