No...

Fully Automatic Weapons fire from an appropriate weapon wins the fight just as well.
Fire Cleanses all, so Flamethrowers or Inferno Rockets/Missiles also work.
You only need Cleansing if you want your mage to do all the heavy lifting in the encounter.

There does seem to be a consistency of greater power grade and less checks on it for Mages in SR4 than in SR3. But then, I use the Priority buy system when running Shadowrun as well. Sure it was a little arbitary but it did seem to work wonders for giving folks reasonable starting points for their characters. That said, the changes to Magic is one of the things that kept me away from SR4.

There does seem to be a consistency of greater power grade and less checks on it for Mages in SR4 than in SR3. But then, I use the Priority buy system when running Shadowrun as well. Sure it was a little arbitary but it did seem to work wonders for giving folks reasonable starting points for their characters. That said, the changes to Magic is one of the things that kept me away from SR4.

As I said, TJ, you've just described 'screw the mage'. That's not a solution. It can work on one run now and then, but it doesn't solve the problem either way (fun for the mage, fun for the rest).

Well, actually cleansing does not even work.

The point beeing is, that you know go up against a grade X-initiate on his own turf.
If the BC should be strong enough to bring the mage down, it is certainly strong enough to give the toxic shamen a hell of a boost.

Two sustaining foci with physical barriers is all he needs to protect himself and raise toxic spirts force 6 or higher.

Lets give this guy a power focus force 4, magic 8 and 4 grades of initiation. I do not think a lesser mage should have his own domain. Espacially toxic.
Some mentor spirit giving him bonus dice on lets say manipulation spells and his evil spirits of choice and a domain +3 (to disable the mage, alone for this he needs a lot of magic to actually build it up).
So he calling his spirits with around 5(skill)+2(mentor)+3(BC)+4(Foci)+8(magic)= 24 dice (and for drain he should have around 20 dice (BC, sustained spells, initations etc.)
Making it possible for him to throw out Force 8 spirits all day long...
(Why is he so powerfull? Because he needs to aspect a raiting 3 domain. With which he actually will have problems....)

The problem is: As soons as you build up a mage who might actually have a raiting 3 or even a raiting 4 domain, he is getting powerfull like shit. (Well, probably because such domain are powerfull like shit)
In order to bring such a Beeing down, you need a bit more than just a few guy with automatic rifles.

Of course you may just say, fuck the rules. This is some toxic kiddy wich just happens to have a raiting 4 domain at his disposal, just to annoy the mage.

I guess this is the point Yerameyahu was getting at.
Of course you may screw the mage, but if you stay in the boundaries of the setting you will probably fuck the sam too.
With a few exceptions: Space or manavoids in general.

So, you are saying that you would never send a team against that Toxic Shaman? or the Bug Hive? Really? Well, okay, but that would be boring for me. Some of the best scenes that I can remember for the mages I have played over the years was in overcoming such challenges, even though there were things in play that were causing havok with the mages abilities. *shrug*

I do not see that as "Screw the Mage" so much as using the environment as it should be. YMMV, of course.

Yup. Giving your characters appropriate challenges suited to their role is not screwing them. If they enter toxic zones every mission it would be though. But every now and then high background counts is a good challenge, putting magical security in any place you plan to challenge the team is appropriate for every mission IMO.

TJ, I dunno how you got from me saying "it can work now and then" to 'never do it'. Sometimes I feel like you don't read my posts.

Rotating or sporadic asymmetric challenges are good and fun: Job A requires a con, Job B is a burglary puzzle, Job C is a bloodbath, etc. But that's not what I said. I said that sporadic toxic deathtraps aren't a *solution* to the mage-balance problem, and neither are ubiquitous toxic deathtraps. Or BGC 3 everywhere, etc.

When did locations from wastelands become houserules?

Or a simple response to their success in toxic areas. Toxic areas are not known for being joyrides and if there are paying customers that need some work done in them and the fixer puts em in touch with the party... If they don't want hard missions then pay should be scaled appropriately.

You said 'just raise the background count', as did several others. As for only using *specific* bad locations, see everything I just said to TJ. The point is that you can't make every mission a toxic lair, nor would 'making all the missions hard' solve the mage/mundane disparity. Either everything is uniformly harder (hurting the mundanes relatively more), or just the 'magic side' is, which is just screwing the mage (assuming it's even possible to *only* make that side harder).

Okay, so I will throw out a houserule that we use to fix some of the problems brought up. I brought it up in my original post, but I'll put it out there again. Let anyone bind foci, not just mages. But don't let mundanes learn spells though. So in practice this usually only opens up counterspelling foci to mundanes, but at the GM's discretion, they might also use a sustaining foci with another mage casting the spell through someone else's foci. (invisible guards can be fun for the whole family)
A guard might not be able to afford a counterspelling foci himself, but if his company wants to prevent a mind control problem or the instant kill direct combat mages, they might issue and require their guards to bond company counterspelling combat and manipulation foci. They issue them guns and armor, why not magical protection? It's probably only 2 or 3 more dice, but that helps and makes the opposition a little tougher for the mage without dropping BGC and making player feel like they're nerfed.

Street Sams running around with magic swords? Hell to the fuck yeah! This should have been included from the start in SR.

I'd also say let everyone learn Counterspelling and Banishing. At least gives the mundanes the option of magical defenses.

I'm pretty leery of anything like that. It's certainly not a drop-in change, let alone a tweak. Some people have produced manatech solutions along these lines, though, and there's some magic clothing crap in the new fashion splatbook (bleh); more palatable, though it still feels like a whole extra layer of crud.

I would want to keep the Awakened still *special*, just not as strong.

Wasn't this in SR2 with the original Spell Locks? Anyone could use one but it cost the mage drain? I missed SR2 so dont hate me, i picked up in SR3 which did away with such things.

I am having trouble understanding all these assertions that it is far too expensive for corps to maintain magical defences. I mean, a wagemage summoning a spirit to patrol every night costs the corp nothing as long as the wagemage can cope with the drain.

If 1 in 100 people are Awakened, it follows that by the law of averages a company with 100 employees will have 1 awakened guy on the payroll. I would actually argue that, given that every corp wants physical, matrix and magical defences to protect their assets, employees, paydata and R&D McGuffins, much smaller corps would place high priority on hiring a wagemage or at worst outsourcing magical defences. Also, given the dystopian setting in which even start-ups are basically allied with some bigger corp, should their R&D start look promising enough for a rival to hire runners to steal it, the parent corp will almost certainly lend security assets to boost the start-up's defences.

In my game world, even magical defences-lite small corps will have at least wards around sensitive parts of their facilities and a patrolling spirit or so. Most reasonable sized corps will have a wagemage on security detail, even if he or she is in rotation with other wagemages "moonlighting" the nightwatch. This at least provides some level of magical defence against mage PCs.

Secondly, given that the price of a tricked out Doberman drone (even with ultrasound) is around the same as 1 month salary for a human security guard, most corps I design for my PCs have more drone than meat defences, and with their in-built OR thresholds drones provide much more of a challenge to PC mages than meat security. But YMMV.

I don't think I said it was far too expensive for anyone. It *is* significantly more expensive than mundane security, though; you explain yourself that drones are cheaper than people. Usefully powerful mages (to summon spirits) are still uncommon, and there's a lot of real estate out there.

I don't think your 'law of averages' makes any sense, though, unless employees are chosen at random and must say 'yes'.

Do the drones provide a greater challenge to the PC-mage than his PC-friends? So, I feel like you've described the problem: either there is token/relatively weaker magical defense, or the mage is better off pretending to mundane the whole run (staying physical, maybe using a gun, etc.).

I think drones do make the hacker/rigger more useful. This could be an instance where defenses against a mage make another character more relevant.

And is it really bad if defenses against another character type mean that it's good to bring a mage, while defenses against a mage make it necessary to bring another character type?

Not at all. Specialty challenges are the whole point (not that I really consider drones an anti-mage challenge). But that's the same as TJ's toxic run example: the mundanes are much more useful there… but how is that a good thing in general? We want the mage to be challenged (but not obliterated) on every single run.

I'm saying that it's cheap and easy to have high levels of physical, combat, and even matrix security, compared to magic. The mage already has some innate advantages, so those together mean the mage will typically be less challenged than everyone else, allowing him to go nuts. It's just the disparity that I've been focusing on.

I agree that wards are pretty cheap, and GMs should use them more. There's still a balance there, of course, and people have talked about various other issues with them elsewhere.

So, many people keep bringing this up here, but what's so unspeakable about 'nerf the mage' a little? To me, it just seems like a vastly simpler and effective solution, while also avoiding 'screw the mage' in play, and 'TPK' from ramping up the magic security too high.

@Ascalaphus

Which actually might be the reason a lot of GMs do not like using them. They would need to know the matrix rules for all off their "defance".

Leading to a lot of "matrix" time, which is again just annoying for the rest.

Magical security, and be it just a bunch of guardian spirits, are a challange for everyone...

And here is the great thing, you may send your force 8, great form guardian spirit and a mage can't just grab it and run away with it.

Like the technomancer can with your 50k drone.

Mundane opposition can be stripped for parts, magical opposition can't if you do it smart.

Even if you do it dumb. Magic security *is* great for challenging the whole team (often too great), but it's hard to always justify. The drones don't have to be 50k… but someone who can summon that spirit you mentioned sure is.

So where are all the mages working? If they are not evenly distributed (silly notion) then there is an area of the economy where their prevalence is much higher than 1%. I would think security is one of those. Obviously not for a site that can only merit a minimum wage guard, but if the site has a team of 10-20 people who are skilled and not just flashlight holders, and have drone backup I would think a mage or two would be well within budget.

No.

Please take into account, that this 1% rule includes ALL people with a magic attribute of 1 or greater., even the children, the elder, the mentally challengend or the disabled. It includes the same magic 11 grade 8 initiate as the 15 year old magic 1 teen who is barely able to cast levitate 1. The SM even speaks that "only a fraction" (whatever you define as "fraction") is only able to even use its magic properly without getting insane. So, if you subtract from this 1% all persons who cannot or don´t want to use real magic, all people with a magic attribute of 2 or lower, all too young or too old, all disabled etc, then it comes closer to 0,1 to 0,5% who is really the "standard issue magic 4 security mage". Considering shift rotation, vacation, holiday, education/instruction availability, promotion circus etc, this standard security mage will be even more rare.

SYL

Um no. Unless there is something that kills magic users before they become adults MORE than other kids, then there is no change in the percent when a sampling is taken based on age.

While that's totally different from what you said before, Daylen, I still don't think it logically follows. Yes, there would be some security mages, and their skills would be extremely valuable. There would also be investigative mages, research mages, medical mages, etc., as well as adepts of various kinds; assuming they ever trained in magic use at all. apple covered a fair bit of this already.

Well, because there is no counter to magic expect to take out the "big guns".
And here we are circeling back, why mages are so powerfull.

It does not make mages really 1% of the working population as security mages available.

You have 100 men, women, children of all ages. 50 of them are adult and in working condition. ONE of these 100 in average has magic 1+. If you reduce your sample size to these 50 working men/women, you dramatically reduce your sample size - and you do not have the same 1% chance that one of your adults is a mage.

SYL

What is wrong with a mage having to use mundane tools and what about this uniquely disadvantages him? In my mind a face is at an even greater disadvantage; the mage's abilities still have a decent chance to work where the face must use different techniques. In fact, unless he's ambushing them, even the hacker is probably just going to shoot them rather than try to hack them in the middle of a firefight. No other character expects his specialization to apply to every situation, much less every situation without drawbacks or better alternatives. Why is the mage different?

Let's not get hung up, the age bit isn't even necessary to show why powerful security mages are rare and valuable, and therefore more expensive than 'equivalent' mundane security.

Because then he's not a mage, PoliteMan. If the hacker never gets to hack, he's just a crappy face or sam, and that's not what he signed on for. In the SR reality, everyone's a free agent who can only do the runs that fit them; but in actual play, people have to bring the same character to every run. I don't think I said anything about 'every situation', unless you object to my idea that you shouldn't screw the mage in every situation.

Exactly. Rare = expensive to use, and even a powerful security mage can only protect so few locations, compared to the dozens/hundreds/thousands of locatoins, VIPs, execs, prototyps and scientists a corp/state/mob wishes to protect.

Of course, competent shadow mages (as NPCs and in relation to the world) are even more rare, but then of course your average player group is statistically not important.

SYL

@PoliteMan
There are two things:
If am am a healer (by magical and mundane means) and there is nothing to heal I can't do much.
But it is not fair to take away my medikit and magic every time there is somebody to heal.

Sure there might be situations where I can't use my "tools". But they should be rare if GM-forced. (If the plan the group comes up with always involve them, well I have to voice my opinion in the group. That would not be the fault of the GM.

The 1% covers also all ppl with "Astral Sight" and "Spell/Spirit Knack", and if i read the fluff in street magic correctly, than these are the majority of the magic "users".

I'm a little confused then, lets back up.

I personally like the drone suggestion, it seems like a very non-intrusive way to deal with mages who may be getting a little stunball happy. I don't see where it uniquely disadvantages the mage compared to other builds. The only way I could see it is if the mage had no Firearms skill (which is crazy) and even then the IP boosted invisibly levitating mage still seems to be doing okay.

On a broader level, most skills are useful "sometimes" which is why most characters, even adepts, have 2-3 areas they're skilled at. Mage skills are "usually" useful and I think that's a weakness, not a strength, of the system. To put it another way, I think mages should be facing at least one situation every game where they're encouraged/forced to rely on a skill other than magic. This can be specific areas with high BGCs or heavy drones or many of the solutions popping around.

I'm not sure if Y and Irion disagree with that or not. If you do, could you please explain how this is unfair to mages, because every single other type of character I can think of encounters at least one problem per mission where is his primary skill set isn't useful or is very inefficient.

Ah, I don't think I said that drones were unfair to mages, but maybe I misspoke or was unclear. Because drones aren't really anti-mage. If anything, they're less anti-mage than anything else, because they're not astral. They are indeed hard to stun. My intended point was that a bunch of drones is hard for everyone, if anyone. That is, if the GM amps them up high enough to stop the mage and his spirits, then he can't avoid wrecking the mundanes in the process.

It's true that if you only used drones, stunball wouldn't be a problem. Depending on the GM, it's also helpful against illusions in general. It's hardly the whole 'mage problem', though, and now everyone gets to deal with drones at all times. :/

I do agree that *occasional* anti-magery is fine, expected, and encouraged. But I've been saying that's not really related to the differential power level problem. Some people suggested using BGC/etc. *in all cases*, as a way of addressing overpowered mages; I've talked about how that's no solution.

The percentage of people who are magically active may not change, but the percent of people who are employable does: that's his point in bringing up age and disability. If 1 in 100 people are magically active, what percentage of those are spellcasters? What percentage of those are trained to a professional level? What percentage of those are of an age and temperament to be employed as professional security? What percentage of those want to work for a corporation? What percentage of those want to be in the security profession?

Then turn it the other direction: how many facilities do corporations in Shadowrun want magically protected? How does that demand match the statistical supply?

There are canon answers to some of these questions, but ultimately you have to decide their answers for your own purposes at your own table.

Time to do the math again: At 1% in a population of 1 million equates to 10,000 magically active individuals. Suppose only 1/2 are Mages of any level, that leaves you with 5,000 mages.

Out of those 5,000 suppose 1/2 are trained to a corps sec level the other 2,500 are used in entertainment or other non security related functions. Out of the 5,000, say 5% are runners/criminals, that would mean there are 250 mages per million on the wrong side of the law and probably 50 of them are free lancers (aka runners).

The consistency is not really in the percentages, the consitency is in the large number of the base population used in determining the total number of mages.

Y:
Excellent, I don't think we disagree at all. And I would agree that constant BGCs won't solve whatever issues mages might cause at your table.


I would stay away from the social argument and stick to the fact that many of that 1% are adepts/have spell knack/etc. Economies in SR function according to "shut up and have fun" logic and don't respond well to other explanations.

This does lead to an interesting line of thought. Presuming that spellcasters are rare and valuable, we wouldn't expect to see any elderly or disabled spellcasters, simply because the value of their service would be higher than the cost of repairing them. Spellcaster lost his leg? Grow a new one! Spellcaster getting old? Offer him leonization for an exclusive contract! Spellcaster is a 30-year old mental retard? Stick enough ware in his brain for him to function and break out the tutorsofts! Spellcaster is violently insane? Plug him full of drugs until he's docile! Spellcaster wants to be an independent, free-thinking individual? Change his mind. Theoretically a lot of the magical security at A level Corps and such should be made up of these "subprime" casters; broken people who have been rebuilt just enough to serve the corp's purpose. Heck, if spellcasters are rare enough the corps would probably start hiring spellcasting ghouls.

Well, 10,000 individuals with a Magic of 1 or better, give or take.


I would call that supposition extremely generous. You're saying 50 percent of all people with a magic rating are spellcasting magicians?


These are interesting figures. I wouldn't assume that 50 percent of the spellcasting magicians - a group that includes the aged, the infirm, and children - would be trained to the level of a corporate security mage, and would choose that field. Considering that all those magicians need researchers and teachers, considering the demand for magic in fields like construction and industry, art and entertainment, it seems like far less than half of the people capable of casting a spell would choose to do so for pay as corporate security magicians.

Heh, PoliteMan, I think it might solve the problem, but it's a terrible solution.

In reply to the SecMage questions and indeedbthe Corp Mage questions... I believe the Cannon Statistic is that the higher percentage of Mages infact Corp Employed. Indeed it's an easy way to a SIN and a life for be of the SINless for a start and it's a step up for almost everyone else, with the money good and the education paid for most of your spellslingers will go Corp given the choice. (shaman used to be the noted exception but in SR4 so far as I can tell that's irrelevant).

However, some such talented people may want to be a Security Mage, which is fine. More often it us highly likely that a Corporate Mage will have a Contractual clause that means they will perform some duties towards Corporate Security in terms of summoning Spirits, binding them for Astral Patrols and even spending time with some of the Corporations Security Assets.

Also that 1% figure is a fluid as you want it but back in SR3 and I think SR2 BBB it was mentioned in relation to Adepts, Mages and Shaman (when you got Magic 6 out the door instead of buying your rating). All the other random things were outside of that figure originally as reads. Also that number feels a little "fuzzy" when compared to canonical organisations ect, just look at Aztechnology and the bloodmage they have, every one of Tir Tairngires Ghosts are Awakened Mages, Shaman or Adepts, Ares Firewatch Teams typically have multiple high grade initiates in their operational numbers, renraku Red Samurai field sonething like 1 Mage to every 5samurai deployed (or something equally spurious), LoneStar employs a couple per precinct and has a magical investigation division as does the UCAS and CAS governments. There are a large number of Druids in the upper echelons of parts of the UK government and at least Two sizeable magical groups come policlubs also active along with the magical operatives of Overwatch. Wuxing has several departments of wujenga on staff that double into security protocols... The lists go on.

Now, back on core topic, done some digging and yes SR4 mages look horribly broken out the door.

You've just listed the most elite AAA and national combat teams, though.

Yes, I did. But those institutions alone have some large numbers involved, plus the research teams employed by the Big Ten and the not UberElite security firms they on which also have magical assets. Add in the Draco foundation, the DIMR, MiTS, the AA and A list Corporations, Atlantean Foundation, Private Magical groups, organisations and institutions and of course Shadowrunners, WizGangs and other Shadow Denizens... And none of thus even considers the Shaman of the NAN and the Pan European Magical Group/Policlubs. The sheer number of of these groups, institutions and organisations compared to the number of targets Shadowrunners are actually going to be hired to hit will make Magical opposition a Factor any Team should be researching on their target.

In fact, my old group used to get REALLY edgey when they researched a Corp target that wasn't running some form of magical security as far as they could tell from the data gained. Of course Gang and Basic targets didn't often have much of anything (basic being a regular storage warehouse or haulage yard ect) but the Corp Targets, they got paranoid about.

So why bother listing the elites, then? No one said they didn't exist. I don't see how the existence of many organizations that involve magic affects the actual, small numbers we're working with; there simply aren't *that* many Awakened, who are powerful, who are sane, who are spellcasters, etc. There are many in absolute terms, but compared to targets, security guards, drones, and so on? Yes, there is magical security for the higher-priority targets. No, they can't all be higher-priority targets.

Was using them to illustrate the flexibility with the 1% number for commonality factor.

I don't think there's a contradiction. There are a very few truly powerful mages, and a fair number of moderates, and some of them are security, and a (relatively speaking) whole lot of ignorable scrubs, all in the 1%. But it's a big world, and there's just no way they could cover it all, even if they wanted to. The fact that almost every PC-team in SR has at least one truly exceptional mage is a huge anomaly, but oh well. We'll assume it's the 'anthropic principle' of roleplaying.

Gah! role-players, they ruin EVERYTHING

Okay, so basically we need a Magical Security Handbook with budget-acceptable anti-magic solutions? On a scale ranging from "nuisance, but you need to pay attention" to "abandon all hope"?

I don't think this is necessarily all that hard, really. You maybe need a little bit of non-RAW manatech, but nothing unreasonable. For example, glowmoss already exist, and optical sensors do, so the basic building blocks for machine-detecting magic are there.



I'm not against some well-executed nerfs on mages, but I think you need a major system overhaul to create the much-desired "smooth curve".

It's pretty obvious though that yeah, Mages are overpowered fairly quickly in the system, for which a fix would be changing their creation, progression a casting rules.

Challenging mages isn't really an issue as th GM can do what s/he wants and it can be canonically supported easily enough too. However given the raw power of mages this can result in a TPK.

That's probably true, but I'm all about the effective kluges.

Yeah, if someone laid out the setting-realistic options to slow the mages down to the same level as everyone else, that'd be very interesting. I still the main issue is that, setting-realistically, you don't get attacked by strong mages very often. It's just that PC-runner teams are so unrealistic. Oh well.