@Shinobi Killfist

Sustaining causes the same Problems or letting a spirit of man casting and sustaining it... Or sustaining foci...
Those Problems would just "go away" if you give every sustained spell a duration.

If you handle quickening and wards as written in the rules, they shouldn´t cause a problem. Quickening would be a high risk, because you could lose the therfore needed karma if the spell is broken away.

Earthdawn magic and Shadowrun magic aren't really the same thing and I'd be peery of trying to equate the two. ED magic lets you do even more things than SR magic but at the same time is weaker. Compounding that fact is that all the spells were sort of "fudged" to get their difficulty and number of threads. This leads to a lot of balance issues -- worse than SR. Trust me after just having scuttled a 3 year long ED campaign that got to 10th circle you do not want to hold ED up as a paragon of balanced spellcasters.

I'll also point out that Spell Matrices already exist in SR -- they are the Filtering metamagic. Spell Matrices were created as a way to protect against corrupt astral space. The weaving and charging spells is represented by the Magic + Counterspelling test and the fact that it only lasts for (Magic) turns. Sure the SR mage has a little more flexibility than the ED mage but the ED mage can go all day long whereas the SR mage can never be sure that his matrix will actually protect him or last long enough.

Higher circle spells DID NOT take longer to cast. Unless you are specifically referring to circle 13+ spells which are rituals and allow you to do stuff like wake up Fangorn Forest, place an entire city in a bottle like Kandor, or raise an army of the dead. Higher Circle adepts got Enhanced and Armored Matrices that came with 1 Thread pre-woven and you could weave multiple threads in 1 action. Thread Weaving difficulties were always based on random numbers so they weren't always high compared to a mage's Thread Weaving Talent (which is usually boosted by magic items and group patterns).

Game breaking spells actualy start around Circle 4-5 for Earthdawn. All disciplines have some form of flight by then and amazing control (reducing the power of Levitate is one of the good points of SR4). I had the misfortune of having a Nethermancer and a Wizard in the same party -- Thorny Retreat (barrier of thorns) and Foul Vapors (poison gas) basically trivialized all encounters. Summoning was likewise petty safe unless you scored a Pathetic failure (rolled less than half the Target Number roughly). I did some calculations and if 0.25% of the population are Elementalists of 3rd circle or less they can feed the entire population 7 course meals 3 times a day in perpetuity while only using a 3 yard by 3 yard area of arable land to feed 813 people. For elementalists to feed the Kingdom of Throal -- 190,000 people -- that takes half an acre of arable land. Lots of people live in suburban lots that are that big in real life.

Here's another magic solution. All Overcast or Multi-Cast spells require 1 fetish per spell to be expended. This fetish is destoyed in the process. Combat and Manipulation fetishes are Restricted so that makes them about as hard to spot as the Street Sam's ammo and grenades. This also means that at some point the Mage might run out of spell components if he is overcasting or multi-casting too much. Might solve those problems.

I'd also recommend bringing back the Exclusive Complex Action which disallows Mages from sustaining a spell or providing spell defense while casting an exclusive spell. Allow mages to choose Exclusive as a limiter on spells again and treat the spell as 1 Force lower for Drain. Require all Overcasting and Multi-Cast spells to be Exclusive. If an Exclusive spell is Overcast or Multi-Cast then it takes 2 Complex Actions to cast the spell. This prevents the Improve (Willpower or other drain stat) douche-nozzles from abusing drain too much as they likely now need to spend a Focus Addiction slot on their Willpower sustaining foci or permanently have a Spirit of Man on call.

I've had no problems with mages in SR4 once I slapped the old SR3 rules of "buy spells at Force and only cast at Force or less" onto it. Overcasting seemed like the "rule of cool" trumped balance while the lack of bookkeeping for Force seemed like an attempt to fix something that broke other things (players used to hate seeng "Manaball 3", "Manaball 6", "Manaball 12" on their character sheets so I guess this is also "rule of cool" or avoiding a "karma tax on mages").

What about the following ideas:

* You can't Sustain spells or Bind spirits with a Force above your Magic.
* Overcasting temporarily lowers your Magic by the excess of Force used, but returns at a rate of 1 point per round. (This may cause some of your sustained spells to fail because they're suddenly too-high Force.)

This would still allow you to occasionally blow up things with overcasting (flavorwise a good feature) while discouraging its use for anything else than desperate win-now-or-die moments.

What if casting spells caused some kind of cumulative exhaustion effect that applied a DP penalty to any actions until you rested? It'd be nice if that core mechanic actually worked right. I'd be interested to see the double-stun-overcasting suggestion playtested (or, as people have suggested in the past, S+P overcasting)

I still see no reason first aid should help with that (mental exhaustion). Stims are fine, but they (at least should) have their own dangerous tradeoffs.

Your sustaining rule is pretty decent. How do you see Edge affecting that?

For Alpha Strikes I'd say bring back Expendable Spell Foci rather than your suggestion or my suggestion of fetishes. Your suggestion requires planning after the fact -- mages are still unhampered by magical resource management until the shit hits the fan. With expendable spell foci or fetishes the mage has to plan ahead and allocate what he thinks he needs to succeed at a run -- just like a Mundane would have to. He's then hampered by all the dealy-o of having to figure out how to smuggle around his ju-ju gear and know that he can't just wait 18 seconds to get his mojo back. This method is a harsher resource management than lowering Magic for X rounds and I feel it is also more flavorful. It is also less broadly versatile because you'd need to pick your spell category (same rules as previous editions).

Despite what people on Dumpshock claim, a street sam can't operate all day long without resorting to melee. Eventually he runs out of bullets or is forced to switch from his good stuff to whatever the mook guards are packing. A 200 nuyen Combat Fetish is almost as expensive as 3 full APDS bursts. Or an expendable foci at Force x 300, 0 karma to bond is even more expensive. Both increase the cost of playing a mage, force the mage to think just as hard as the mundanes during the planning and gearing phases, and long-term forces the mage to plan whether he wants cool mundane toys or increased magical power (do I save for a new drone or do I purchase more fetishes so I can survive the next couple of runs?).

Not at all. Edge doesn't affect your Magic rating, so it doesn't affect your (in)ability to Sustain.




Yeah, but I actually prefer that. I think I'd like a system where a mage can still do most things if he hasn't prepared, but the price he pays (in Drain, or temporary Magic loss, or something else) is higher than if he can prepare.

I'm not really sure I want even more resource management, I think SR already has way too much detail in things like specialty ammo and all that. Eventually it turns into a choice between either spending way too much time number-crunching, or losing out on significant power because you don't want to do all that accounting work. I think one of the attractions of a mage may actually be that you don't tend to have quite so much resources to track.

(I'm looking at you, guns with variable ammo, barrel mounts AND interior modifications, including alternative rates of fire and recoil manipulation, and drones with custom sensors with custom sensors-on-sensors, along with sensor software, autosofts, anti-hacking software and whatnot.)

Isn't the point to make mages just as annoying to play powerfully as norms?

Sometimes people seem positively vindictive towards mages.

I don't want to make mages uncool; I deeply like the concept of magic in SR. But there are definite problems, both with mages having some powers that are too-unstoppable or just too cost-efficient, and a lot of mundane stuff being overcomplicated (hacking, especially with Unwired) or just not being good enough (grenade scatter).

Apart from correcting some truly abusive things in magic (Power Focus-Multicasting, Concealment), I think the main effort should be in streamlining mundaneness.

Unless you impose some draconian D&D-4 style system to make everyone use the same cost structure for abilities that do the same, there'll be places of unbalance, where one way of buying things is just more efficient than the other way. That's probably not going to go away, but careful costing of things can reduce excesses.

---

Anyway, about the Sustained Wall of Fire as a magical power source. That's a good point; maybe Sustaining should cost something per time unit. All that power has to come from somewhere, and even if you're just drawing the power out of the environment, channeling it all through you all the time should take a toll. Maybe a number of points of automatic, unresistable drain per (minute/hour)? With foci needing cooldown time now and then? Making sustained spells kind of like drugs perhaps, maybe even with aftereffects?

I was meaning more that the solution is to make everyone less annoying, not help mages more. So we agree.

Okay... I don't own SR4, I haven't read much of SR4 in a looooong time...

But iirc in SR3 a Constantly active spell effect that is in a permanent or even semi permanent location does cause disruptions in the world around it. Cannot recall exactly what that is, something similar to a manawarp I think or possibly going Toxic.

From what I have read, in this topic and way back when, I really do feel that the SR3 magic system was by far superior to what is presented in SR4 and much tighter in it's self policing. The truth is that any game that uses magic as something special will eventually find that mages out power mundanes over time. Look at the World of Darkness,AD&d, DnD 3 and 3.5, Agone, Earthdawn, Buffy/Angel/Witchcraft and the Warhammer and WH40k inspired RPG's. Magic in all of these eventually trumps out any mundane abilities.

But...

People still play mundane characters, because it's an RPG and your character concept that's fun to play may very well not be magical at all. It's also a group effort and experience, not an internal contest to see who's character build is better than who's. If your team has an all powerful Mage in it, be happy and thankful and think of the Big Scores you're going to be able to pull in instead of the small time Runs that used to mean you could just scrape by. Only thing is, those Big Scores are usually better protected than the stuff you've been targeting in Tacoma or Renton or even DownTown.

Sure the Mage has a lot of options but it's still just one guy, even with foci and spirits one guy can only do so much and with Magic inevitably it's going to bite you in the ass one day.

Double post...

Nope, that makes no sense. It's not fun to be BMX Bandit, even if it's on Big Scores. And that's kind of the point: the mage isn't just one guy. When he gets bitten in the ass, it's either because the GM is extraordinarily geeking the mage (addressed here and everywhere else), or it's because everyone got in trouble (by definition, not fun for anyone). None of these are good situations; the solution is for players to not suck (possible, but not reliable), or for the rules to not suck (… okay, probably impossible). But we live in hope, and house rule mages down to 'fun, challenging, and not unfair'.

It would be awesomely cool to be BMX Bandit. Unfortunately, my lame ass would kill myself doing anything remotely even close to what the BMX Bandit pulls off routinely.

Of course, Angel Summoner would be cooler.

That's the other thing I've noticed.... This preoccupation with the GM having to gun for the Mage to challenge him which will inevitability lead to problems for everyone else...

In my experience Shadowrun was a visceral and dangerous game when I learned to play it. The combat systems could get you killed as quickly with a bullet as a manabolt and while there was some scaling of the opposition in the adventure it wasn't as tightly adhered to as what seems to be rolled out for every RPG of the last 4years or so. It was the GMs job to tailor to fit and there was even a book called Corporate Security that gave guidelines on what the Corporations in SR did to protect themselves against intrusions and shadow runners. It helped the GMs shape those threats into a genuine mould for the setting.

Mages were challenged, legwork and planning were major things and if mistakes were made Runners died (or worse). If mages are seeming overpowered that's because they are not engaging in the Shadowrunning Mage's very first priority, namely dealing with Magical Threats to the rest of the team. Like I said, I don't own SR4, but for the Mage to be a do all and end all he's going to need a TON of Karma (as was mentioned), several Sustaining Foci and/or a small gang of spirits keeping his spells up to offset casting penalties, several grades of initiation, some way of hiding all of this from moderately common Corp security mages and affiliated para animals and bound spirits, all the while dropping six security officers per initiative pass with stun balls.

By which point in time I would add (to use SR3 terms) your average Street Sam is on maxxed Wires, probably several chunks of BetaWare replacing the initial Alpha wearing Zoe second skin + FFBA + armour of choice toting AV loaded, custom refitted Panther Assault cannon with SmartgunII system, Gas Vent IV. The rigger is in a Q-Tank while flying a small fleet of drones and slaves aguila gunships with a combined firepower to make Ghostwalker actually notice them and the Hacker is doing whatever Hackers do.... (a decker would be running an improved Fairlight excalibur with a few Smartframes and a Dozen home programmed utilities from Hell).

Double post again, silly iPad

Dialing up the magic threats is very hard to distinguish from 'GM gunning for the mage', and we don't need the mage to be 'do all and end all'; he is plenty strong out of the gate. That's the point, the rest is just distraction.

It is certainly true that basically any character can be very powerful, and that's not really what we're talking about. This has be rehashed a thousand times, but the mage can also be wearing that armor, or riding in that vehicle, etc. The world is also much better equipped to counter the threats posed by that sam or rigger, or even the hacker (matrix quagmire notwithstanding), in terms of 'business as usual'.

I don't think sustaining on its own really causes a problem because there are logical out of game limits to how long someone can focus on the task of holding a spell even if they are not mentioned in the rules. But switching to a sustained+duration system where you sustain spells but for a maximum length of time depending on the spell would help a lot to make the world make more sense and it would balance things a bit. Again I don't really see the balance issues in play, but if someone wanted to work the system magic is a great way to do it so closing a few loopholes wouldn't be a bad thing.

As I stated earlier, I use a concoction of houserules to limit insta-summoning, first aid healing of P drain, and frown upon overcasting as SOP, but for those GMs having trouble with invisible mages overcasting stunball taking over their games, I can recommend the following RAW-legal advice.

Overcasting stunball
1) Intelligent opposition: Don't have your security mooks just stand clumped together waiting to be stunballed to unconsciousness. They should be spread out with some of the squad taking covering positions as they patrol the site even if the alarm has not been raised.
2) Remember the spell AoE! Other PCs might not take too kindly to be caught in the spell AoE if the mage has LOS on them. The mage himself might be affected by his own spell (most folk can see at least a part of themselves, even if it is just eyebrows etc in the periphery).
3) Use the optional rule about net hits increasing drain, and vary opponents Willpower scores - most might be 2-4 range, but don't worry about throwing in the odd 5 or 6.
4) Drones! Much cheaper for Corps to run than security guards (1 time payment plus minimal maintenance vs monthly salary).

Improved Invisibility (Assume everyone is talking about this, as cybereyes and drone sensors aren't fooled by standard version)
1) Make the mage make an Infiltration check anyway, with glitch they might make a sound, crit glitch knock something over.
2) Ultrasound/radar. Given the number of wars in SR canon the occasional security guard might have an ultrasound system. Given how many runner mages use Imp Invisibility, corps might spring for ultrasound on some of their drones/for some of their security detail. Shouldn't be used by the GM every time, but I can tell you from experience if it only happens once in a blue moon the mage is going to be on edge every time he uses it, and when he is caught out by it, it can ruin his day.
3) OR threshold for cameras, cybereyes and drone sensors
4) (Lo-tech invisibility countermeasures for gangs and such): Paintball! Oh, and don't forget doors and motion sensors etc.

@Shinobi Killfist

You are right. In play it is a minor thing, merly cosmetic.
(Well, exept for the spirit of man casting 2 spells on you and sustaining them for half a day.)

Actually I do not think the magicrules are a big fuck up. I think there are several minor loopholes, which are just too easy to use and most magic stuff is so much more than the mundane stuff.
For example I dislike that they changed wards from beeing walls to alerting the creator. Why?
Because how many wards can one mage now have up before getting insane?
I dislike that spirits can do it too, because like this a mage can make easy 500 nuyen a day for working 3 sec. Yes, in the means of shadowrun, this ain't a problem, unless you let him use it in his downtime...
I dislike how essence loss is punished by a one time tax, making it very important when it happens.
And there are some other points, but most are really easy to fix, actually.
It is just, that a mage really does not need to step out of his way to use them all...

Anyway, since I was just reading something about 3.5 and Pathfinder mages being dominant at higher levels too. Is dominating the game something that any "class" with the ability to "change reality" will inherently do, to the anger of some?

I mean, if a hacker "changes reality" by actually succesfully altering files on people and manipulating information to the point that the enemy drags out the MacGufin out of the base into the hands of the Sam who they're convinced works for UPS, then he's dominating the game while the Sam just stands there.

Or if you have a "politician" character who can just call in favors, lobby around, have some random legislation shifted around and engage in general pornomancy, he's also changing reality and dominating the game.

I sometimes wonder if it's about dumb brute fighters being miffed that everyone else is running circles around them.

In broad theoretical terms, yes, a hacker is a world-beating magician (especially because he's also a rigger, if it came to that). If the mechanics allowed it (pornomancer), a face can have theoretically unlimited power (con artist shows). However, the mage is the one that *realistically* has this potential in the normal SR4 game. The world is prepared for hackers, etc., in a way that it's not quite for powerful mages; that's why everyone says, 'just use BGC, enemy mages, spirits, etc.'. The issue there is always balancing that response so that it's not vindictive, excessively dangerous for the other PCs, or un-fun for the mage/group. Dialing them *back* at the baseline just seems easier.

If mages are too potent just have more runs in areas with high background counts or up in orbit. If there is too much magic blasting away, just raise the background count and give the players a nice fun fluffy reason related to their excessive use of magic.

Let me but it like that, if a technomancer could hack any device (online or not) because of handwavium, than a hacker could make a stand against him in terms of utility, no matter the dicepool.
A mage is said technomancer.

@Ascalaphus

Absolutly not. But this would lead to few people actually wanting to play a mage, because if you do not play them with their unique powers in mind, they would suck hard.
Meaning: To play as good as a sam, you would need to act really smart. (And by smart I do not mean knowing the rules and powergaming. By smart I really mean smart)




The problem is, this is all just talk. Social skill test are GM bias. As is what Information can be hackt from which position...
@Yerameyahu

An other point is, if the players can't count on the fluff to tell them how hard a given job gone be, they needed to be railroaded by the GM or everything has to be told them by the GM up front.

Right. It's a question of expectation and consistency. That's also the issue with the kinds of suggestions you just mentioned, Daylen; it could work (though there are other theorycraft issues with that), but everyone needs to know it's dramatic house rules ahead of time.

What exactly do you mean by "the world is not prepared"?

Is it the players/GM, who lack good ideas on how to react to a magical enemy? That sounds dubious to me; D&D is full of strategizing and counter-strategizing, mostly revolving about the magic-users. If you send in the players to deal with a troublesome NPC mage, they'll also turn wickedly creative.

Or is it the game world that's not prepared to deal with mages? Because I disagree.

An essential element of society is protecting its members from bullying. People band together to resist raiders, evil neighboring countries and whatnot. Just like that, they'll use the tools of civilization to deal with a rampaging mage. When a society is threatened by a guy with a big stick, they pool their resources to obtain an even bigger stick.

When a mage starts to attack people, all the people feel threatened and start calling whoever passes for the boss of the area, be it either the police or the mafia don. They take down the mage.

If a mage is thinking he's all sneaky like, mind-controlling people do to weird things, it can work out for a while. But sooner or later people start to notice. A sudden rush of suicides draws attention. People suddenly feeling compelled to give away all their money attract attention, for example from their angry wives or even themselves when they come to their senses. People start asking questions and looking for the cause.

Now, either the mage has turned hiding behind the scenes into a fulltime job (which can be an interesting cat and mouse game itself), or investigators figure out who he is, and then action is taken.

Consider: a mage can certainly Powerball to death a local gang. But if any of them get away, the mage just gained an enemy, and that enemy doesn't exist in isolation. The gang probably paid tribute to the mafia don, so now the mage needs to watch out for that. Actually, even if there were no survivors, the don will want to know why he's not getting paid anymore.

Now suppose this mage is actually quite badass and the don isn't confident he can confront and kill him. So he tries to cozy up to him, maybe offer him a consulting job. The mage gets a nice income, but he needs to watch out; his boss may resent him and slip him some cyanide, while the boss's rivals may want to remove him prior to attacking the don. Or if the don is arrested, he might sell out the mage to save his own skin. Authorities are certainly interested in rogue mages.

And then there's the magical societies. They don't want witch-hunts, so perhaps they police their own kind. Or their mentor spirits complain about an evil force in the land. Or they just don't necessarily want rivals.

All in all, a powerful mage has a lot to worry about. He can certainly get by, and even prosper, but he really needs to watch out. Anytime you actually use power to do big things, people notice big things happened, and want to know who did it, and what guarantee they have that he won't do big things to them next.

I disagree with your disagreement. My point is not that mages can't be countered, but that the things that counter them aren't in the same category of routine, automatic, and pervasive as physical, personal, or computer security. They probably *should* be, but I don't think they are. Everyone has locks, firewalls, armor, sensors, and distrust. What they don't all have is BGC lotus flowers, patrolling spirits, mages of their own, and trained paracritters. Etc.

There's simply less immune response to powerful mages, until, yes, they manage to piss off *everyone*. As I said earlier, this is somewhat true of any of the types (hacking, killing, conning, burgling), but I feel it's a different category entirely for magic. That is, a powerful anything can really rampage through the weaker parts of 2070, but the difficulty curve for anything but magic is longer and smoother. It's just a function of novelty, rarity, and cost. In addition, none of your examples of what can happen to the upstart mage are mage-specific; everyone has to deal with those problems, so the mage is still winning there.

Ascalpus: Everything you said holds true for ANYONE in the setting. The problem is that the mage is inherently capable of getting away with that shit for much longer than a mundane because ONLY AWAKENED STUFF CAN ADEQUATELY DEAL WITH AWAKENED BEINGS. Mundanes at least leave traces everywhere that anyone can follow. Mages only leave a signature at the place where they cast the magic and only for (Force) hours.

Let's take a crazed sniper situation. Response time from first shot is 1d6 rounds giving an expected 3.5 rounds so lets say 3. Street Sam takes 6 aimed shots (assuming Wired 3 or drugs in combination) before a patrol drone shows up. In that same time the Knight Errant hacker pulls up the video footage and runs some analysis programs to determine probable weapon, direction of shot, and distance of shot. He then relays that to the drone to send it in that direction while setting up a search grid with other patrol drones. Car patrols are dispatched to canvass the area at the same time. The hacker sets up monitoring on any GridGuide or Knight Errant jurisdiction cameras and sensors in the probable area. Going to be tough for the Street Sam to deal with. They can also use all their magical resources to track the Sam down.

Mage casts Powerball in some combination that allows him to not worry about drain or only take 1-2 boxes of stun. He still has 2 rounds to get out (assuming no Improved Reflexes or drugs). Knight Errant hacker has no telemetry and might not even know what is happening for a few rounds -- pretty sure the sample stats in Unwired don't have Magical Background or Magical Threats. Mage spends second round shapechanging into a bird if he wasn't already in bird form (hint: he should be). If the mage has more than 1 IP he can take Complex Actions to reduce the astral signature. By the time the hacker knows what's going on the mage has flown away and Knight Errant now has (Force) hours to find a signature that is located somewhere within line of sight of the target area. There could be all sorts of different signatures and they have no idea which is the one they are looking for. Then they'd have to get 3 hits on an Assessing test or else they can't remember the signature. Then they could send Spirits out to Search (the power) to find all the owners of the signatures they found. Boy, I sure hope the mage doesn't have Flexible Signature or Extended Masking or KE is fucked.

So to recap: KE has all is resources to track down the Street Sam but only awakened resources to deal with the Mage. They also have WAY more leads against the Street Sam than against the mage.

Also I'm pretty sure that as SHADOWRUNNERS all the members of the team are trying to live a shadowy life outside of the law.

Okay, I suppose that's true. It makes sense, too, from a setting viewpoint: powerful mages are quite rare (even weak mages aren't common), so it's not a threat many people have to deal with. If the mage hides his identity, and cloaks his magical assaults, it can be a while before people catch on to him. But when they do, the response will also be more extreme. A mage with Magic 6 who displays intent on seizing control of a neighborhood is a credible threat to the crime bosses, and a terrorist (or hero, which make get you even more enemies) according to the government.

Is that really a bad thing?



Well, actually mages tend to leave all the normal forensic trails that everyone else do. Yes, no bullets to track, but unless they're constantly invisible, they're still visible on the cameras that Big Brother puts up everywhere, and the Perception check to spot powerful magic is doable even for a good camera. Also, mages need a place to sleep, to eat, and they need sources of information. Just because it's hard to find him with a spell in his hands doesn't mean that normal criminal investigative tactics (like asking around if anyone's seen suspicious people asking weird questions, or luring him out with an irresistible target) suddenly can't work anymore.

And mages can be killed just like anyone else. And since they're always armed and dangerous, nearly unable to hand over their weapons, they'll be "arrested" with extreme prejudice.





I think putting it in such isolated incidents is really distorting. Who did the mage kill? Why? A police detective will be asking those questions. Did the attacker try to hide the bodies, or did he hurry off? Did cameras see anything unusual? Did local bums see anything unusual? Who wanted those people dead? Was it a chance encounter, or a hit, or a deal gone sour?

Mages aren't automatically perfect criminals. They make mistakes, they forget things, or they simply lack the power, time and knowledge to sufficiently control every aspect of the world. A detective can hunt them down like he can hunt down any skilled criminal. Sure, mages have advantages that ordinary criminals lack, but that doesn't make them perfect.

And a bit more meta: I really doubt that the kind of player whose mage goes on a rampage has thought things through sufficient to commit a "perfect crime". A crime he can get away with for a few days, or if he does it once and never comes back, perhaps. But if people know he had a motive, or that he's powerful enough to have the means, or if they're good at old-fashioned investigation, they can figure it out.

If someone starts really breaking the rules, everyone else reacts. Action and reaction. If the mage raised the stakes by committing a high-profile crime, then Society will react with overwhelming force. When KE decides to bring down a rampaging Magic 6+ Initiate with Extended Masking and Flexible Signature (apparently), then they won't feel compelled to send a "level appropriate encounter", they'll send in enough force to be completely certain of victory.

Because the big downside about being badass, is that when people take you seriously and decide to take you down, that it's really going to hurt, a lot.

That's certainly true. My point was just that everyone has locks and armor, but almost no one has real magic defenses (in the baseline setting), including the whole 'resist spells with one stat' thing. So that goes a long way to explaining 'problem mages'.

And again, that the overwhelming responses to PC-grade mages (that is, extremely rare and powerful ones) are no fun for anyone at the table. There's no smooth progression, mages just go from 'no contest' to 'nuke war'.

Magical Security was a Standard in 2060... Why is it no longer a Standard in 2070?

Again, don't own or know that much SR4, but it seems unlikely that things will have altered THAT much.

As said, it does sound like Mages in SR4 are too hot out the barrel compared to their predessors, but if people are not using Magical CorpSec then that's an answer to a problem Right There.

Magical Security is expensive. It's standard in some places, but not every place.

Sure, not 'common' in general, but certainly employed around areas that Shadowrunners may be employed to target.

Usually you'd have a few watcher spirits or low force elementals on patrol with instruction to alert the Mage at the Security centre fir the Security provider to any incursions. In the event of which the Mage can communicate with the Secteams onsite and dispatch higher force Elementals to deal with magical incursions. All SOP for your average wagemage in a SecCorp, and that's Remote Magicl Security. What about those sites that have Mages for onsite security? Paraanimals are also a common security feature used by AA-list corporate security providers, even if it's only some trained Hell Hounds.

Wards are cheap and have already been mentioned.

Also all those wonderful awakened strains of Bacteria and Mosses ect...

A smoother progressions would have been nicer yeah. An intermediate stage between "I'll use a gun instead" and "you don't stand a chance against me". Maybe "resist with one stat" should be changed, I'm not a big fan of that either. I mean, nobody's complaining the Indirect spells are too good. Maybe if you hiked the Drain for the Direct spells a whole lot, based on the idea that you're paying for the limited resistance.



Anyway, I think what's really needed is a new Corporate Security Handbook, which is mostly aimed at GMs, explaining reasonable-budget solutions to security threats ranging from burglary to social engineering to magical attacks. Because I think a lot of the solutions exist, but people can't instantly name them, which leads to the belief that mages are unstoppable.

I think there's a difference between 3.5 and SR which lies in the nature of defense. In 3.5 there's supposed to be effective defenses to attacks, you're supposed to be able to trade attacks with your foes for long, epic fights. In SR it's more lethal and defenses are far less effective; the "glass cannon" syndrome written large. The relative power of the cannons doesn't really matter because they're all still made of glass.

I think the real issue is most of us don't play at that level. I don't, because that level of lethality can lead to a lot of character death and I tend to like my characters and if they keep dying it's hard to get attached. We play at a lower level because that allows for semi-effective defenses. It also generally allows players to specialize while allowing others to contribute. For example, an unoptimized hacker might not be able to hack every security system, so someone has to charm a guard or use an invisibility spell or cut the power. And that's generally a better story than a single optimized character doing everything in his field and never needing help.

So there's really two kinds of SR games IMO, the "high-optimized" ones where lethality is extremely high and each character dominates their field and "low-standard" games where the lethality has been toned down and characters need to cooperate not only on the overall goal but for individual tasks as well.

The problem I've always had with mages is they always seem to play like they're in a "high-optimized" game even if we're in a "low-standard" game for three reasons: simple mechanics, build structure, and the lack of effective defenses.

In terms of simple mechanics, I mean how many different die rolls it takes to achieve something. I actually think the mechanical rules for mages are almost too well written, I found them the easiest set of rules to learn and it takes very few roles to achieve clear results. Where a hack might require 6-10 different rolls from different dicepools or a successful con might take two or three rolls to find out how well you "really convinced them", magic requires 2-3 rolls most of the time to achieve clear mechanical results. This doesn't just mean magic is a lot simpler, it means magic tends to get used more. While it might be more efficient "in game" to do a bunch of complicated rolls to sneak/hack/con past a door guard, in the real world we'd rather the mage just mind-controlled him in 20 seconds (no fuss-no muss) rather than spend 10 minutes rolling it all out. For comparison, imagine if the hacking rules were changed to "Roll exploit, then skill, resisted by Firewall". Mentally rebalance to dicepools however you want but a lot more hacking would get done and that would make it more powerful, especially in terms of perception. In short, magic is simple and straightforward while other methods are generally more complicated or "fuzzier" which leads to more magic use which leads to more magical power, both perceived and real.

Second, optimization is built-in for mages. The simplicity is one part, initiate and boost Magic, but all the coolest fluff for mages is locked up in initiation. It's rife with awesome Masonic imagery and the whole concept ties into personal growth and understanding, which is something most people want for their characters. So for mages not only is the path to optimization simple but it's lined with some of the best RP/fluff candy in the books. For your bog standard mage, initiating is basically their pre-defined character growth path. This leads to situations where mages always optimize, if not at chargen then as games progress. It's not the simplicity of initiation, it's that initiation is really cool thematically and provides great opportunities to RP AND optimizes your character.

Finally, I think the lack of effective magical defenses also plays a big roll. To be fair, there aren't a lot of good defenses against an optimized sam or a pornomancer either, see the "glass-cannon" situation above. There are a lot of situations, however, where there simply are either no effective defenses, no effective defenses which don't involve another mage, or defenses which very quickly lose their power and effectiveness. Other people have expanded on this before but it feeds into the above problem: for "low standard" games there has to be some semi-effective defense. Cheap armor or firewall upgrades are easy examples of defenses a minion or character could easily have which in a low powered game would provide at least semi-decent defenses. As games shift to "high-optimized" these defenses become too expensive/too unbelievable for minions to have. Magic defenses beyond basic wards, however, almost always seem either too expensive or too unbelievable.

In short, I don't think it's a problem of raw power. A fighter in 3.5 loses because fighters simply because fighters have few effective ways to kill high CR creatures. They can't do their key job. SR characters don't face that problem, the system is simply to lethal and gritty for that to be a problem. If you're looking for a 3.5 analogy, I think you should look at the wizard-cleric/druid divide. Most SR "classes" are like 3.5 wizards: very powerful if you build them right, much weaker if you don't. Whereas SR mages are more like 3.5 clerics and druids, just play druid and you'll be one of the most powerful characters in 3.5, no optimization needed.


PS. Two things which may come up. First, as optimization increases I don't think the problem is mages so much as adepts and mys-ads. There are few reasons I can think of for a highly optimized character to not avail themselves of magic and few builds that wouldn't be improved somehow by adept/mys-ads powers/spells, if not at chargen then over time. Second, for the "infinite advancement" argument, at high levels of optimization I've always been more concerned about technos/hackers/riggers breaking the action economy. A mage is a powerful entity, with three summoned spirits they're a team of powerful entities, but an optimized THR is limited only by how many agents/drones he can support, and with replicating worms featuring R6+ programs each of those agents can do a lot. It's not hard to imagine a high level THR with dozens of agents/drones taking hundreds of actions even while that character is asleep. I've never seen it, for the same reason I've never played Pun-Pun, but that would be my big concern.

I agree, Moirdryd, but I'm saying that minor magical security might as well be zero for all it does to the PC-mage, and heavy magical security kills *everyone*. It's very tough to challenge the mage just enough, and in a setting-realistic way (those FAB-walls are pricey).

Agreed, 3.5 is much more concerned with having appropriate counters to all sorts of attacks. Even if attacks hit really hard, there's an answer to everything.




Yes.




Well-put. And I think I'd prefer simplifying hacking and combat to be similar in difficulty to magic rather than the other way around. A certain level of rules complexity allows multiple ways to do things instead of merely brute power, but SR is topheavy IMO.





Yes. While simplicity in mechanics is admirable (as long as it doesn't remove options; magic mechanics are simple principles powering a wide range of spells), we need better "dials" to adjust magic power levels, a better curve.




I get the feeling nearly all of this boils down to the irresistible Stunbolt/Stunball. I don't hear anyone complaining about Fireball, since you get to resist that (somewhat) with armor and evasion. Plus, its drain is significant.



That's a nice analogy. While a SR mage still has to make some choices, you do get a lot of stuff automatically. But I don't want to exaggerate this, because I think that particularly a high Agility works the same for Sams.



Adepts with Improved Ability [something Matrix-oriented] and MysAds hacking with Analyze Device always struck me as the height of cheese. Even if it's RAW, it Should Not Be.



This is why technology can be so scary. A THR can control theoretically infinite minions with the proper structures, all it takes is vast amounts of bookkeeping. It's the bookkeeping which keeps this from happening all that often, which is not the way it's supposed to go.



But if the mage is so good at smashing through opposition, isn't that a signal that perhaps you're "playing below your challenge rating"? Time to get higher-stake jobs where you actually need all that power, where it's not just a luxurious surplus.

Once a mage is no longer enjoying a surplus, he needs to economize on what he learns, and one of the best ways to economize is to delegate to party members, who suddenly feel needed again.

Essence Eating Dual-Natured Security Guards. The magicians will not even want to get near the place!

And Ghouls can finally have a job, and all the Shadowrunners they can eat.

A basement full of feral ghouls is a nice security asset

I agree, Ascalaphus, but that's exactly what we're talking about: mages tend to be at a whole different power level. A run that would challenge that mage magically is probably one that would also have *even* higher levels of matrix, physical, etc. security.

Re: ghouls: but only again *non*-mages, once again.

Or a Run against some magical entity, like a toxic mage or a Yama king in Hong Kong

@ghouls: a bunch of feral ghouls with a few ghoul/vampire/other infected mages

@NiL_FisK_Urd
Yeah, the mage will have problems in this toxic terrain. Having a BC against him and in favor of the opposit mage.
But lets just think for a moment, what this means for the rest of the team...

It lets them shine, of course...

*shrug* You've just described 'screw the mage' and 'fight mages with mages', though. It doesn't matter if they happen to be Infected, and it's still just as much as issue for the mundane runners. This still says to me that the solution is to dial back the PC-mage baseline, and/or smooth out the curve of mage-only challenges. The former is a lot simpler, because it only (mostly) involves tweaking crunch.

Similarly, but tricky, would be to make the 'appropriate' magical defenses more mage-specific. Astral-only defenses, Awakened-only threats, these things do exist. They just tend to be only at the scary-high end (MADS, for example), or not really reasonable: an astral spirit can always jump into the physical and wreck the mundanes, so it's not really mage-only. :/ BGC is the classic example of this, but I do agree that it's a little ham-handed as a major tactic. I just think tweaking their BP/karma costs is easier, and/or the many other suggestions we've seen over the years (better mundane defenses against spells, and so on).

Thanks, PoliteMan, for some cogent points that have not been brought up before. A bajillion pages ago I had brought up my position that the game has the built-in controls for mages, just as for other skill-sets, but the reality is we can argue back and forth in a forum like this forever and not come to a consensus.

I wish I were able to bring a few of us together for a game in which I as GM would run a few players who think mages are too powerful and show what I think is a world in which mages can be challenged no matter how optimized they may be, without (and this is the key point for many people, I think) blowing away other PCs or destroying their players' fun. If the game world seemed reasonable to the players, perhaps their misgivings would go away. Or, to be fair, maybe I would change my opinion. Either way, all this is just talk without a few test cases.

If Dakka = Insufficient Then +Dakka

That certainly is the goal.

I am kind of curious about this. Sure magical security is expensive, but any security that will slow any runner down is expensive. Sure in a place where they can't afford magical security a mage will be walk all over the opposition if he has the right spells etc. But the street sam will do the same, the hacker will do the same. It isn't like you will be bumping into guards with 4ip and 18 dice in perception in the same building where they can't afford magical security.

And on a more in game note and more directed at the thread in general while I'm designing an adventure I am not really writing the yearly budget up for Corp ABC I am just giving them the security needed to make it a fun adventure and that includes adding in appropriate challenges for each of the players. It's there for the player not to get them. IOW I am not trying to get the mage or screw him by adding magical security any more than I am trying to screw the Decker by adding tough IC, or by putting appropriate targets in for the face etc. I am putting in content that needs their specialty in order for the run to succeed. So while there probably are corps that can't afford magical security they just wont be the runs I offer since I am trying to add appropriate challenges to the party and they have a mage.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Only if the toxic mage is going for radiation spirits....
Again, the only way to win such a fight is, tada, cleansing metamagic....