Personally I think the best thing that could be done in future editions of SR is drop the special little snowflake value of magic users. Bump them up to 20 or even 40% of the population and be done with it. That would more accurately reflecft most random shadowrun tables i've seen anyway. The question to ask yourself at this point in SR's development: Why play a mundane, you gain nothing you cannot duplicate with magic or gear and open up a whole new set of options.

That doesn't seem like a good idea.

I have no difficulty raising the relative percentage of persons with a Magic rating, but would expect to see most persons having access to a limited palette of magical options: adepts, knacks, people with only Magic 1, and so on. It didn't bother me in Earthdawn if the brewer had access to brewing magic, but if he could flay the flesh from my bones, that'd be a pretty tough setting to be a criminal in.

If it is at expense of the game being fun, yeah I'd give up on it making sense. But in the end it can make just as much sense to have magical security on every run the mage goes on then to make it rare. Mages are rare even in shadorun teams the johnson is paying a premium to hire a mage for a team. Is he going to do so when the only security is 6 rent a cops and a drone that a mundane and cheaper team could handle with no problem? I'm thinking no. Doesn't it make sense that usually the times the johnsons will come to your team with magical assets is when those magical assets are needed, or do people just like throwing money away. Work from the starting point of making the game fun and you can use the statistics to explain why a rarity like magical security is there instead of it not being there. Don't work from the statistics and try to craft fun out of what you saw in the numbers.

*shrug* It can't be fun if it doesn't make sense, while still being a SR 'world'. If you want nonsense, a non-living world, that's a different game (or, as the case may be, spinoff of SR).

I agree, and I think I've said all along, that there should be appropriate magical security for the mage's power. That's exactly the problem: if the team mage is a 10, and everyone else is a 6, 'appropriate' runs won't be fun for them. I just think the solution is to reduce his power, not amp up the security everywhere.

I always thought it would be fun to put together a team with no Awakened PCs and everyone had Astral Hazing. I imagine people with AH are more rare than magicians, but they would be the masters of runs against very magically active targets. I mean, sure it's more expensive, but if you had the money, who would you hire to go against the place with a team of security mages and patrolling spirits and such: the team with one strong mage, or the team where every member can basically ignore the average security mage? Who would you hire to do a hostile extraction of a magically active target? I don't know if it would be sustainable as a long-term game (depends on the players, probably), but I think it would be a good one-shot or short series.

From a Game view / "Developing a Game called Shadowrun" it would be a terrible idea since magic security is indeed more powerful against mundane threats then mundane security. Even if every 10th person on this planet would be able to cast even a limited version of life sense / detect enemy etc, it would simply kill the rest of "believability" on how SR could work as a society (not counting magic or SF technology of course.

When it comes to slowing done mundanes, I think, there is another way to achieve that.

- better implementation of background count, that it becomes way more normal and is part of every normal descriptoin of an area.
- better implementation of magic defense (like the security patroul standing not in one place, but several meters away from each other) for players and GMs alike.
- checking the sense of supplemental books in SR. For example "Magig in the Shadows" in SR3 was a book full of possibilities, almost every page was a page on how a mage could have more options or become more powerful (My favorite: orichalkium creation) But then you looked at the "Men and Machine" book and the rules there - and every mundane person had two problems: the incredible costs of new toys (whereas new spells etc were way more cheap) and the rules for implantation, which made it almost impossible to implant new ware due to the incredible costs even for basic bioware or cyberware. One book dedicated for magic bringing new possibilities, one book dedicated to mundane toys, bringing new costs.
- Make mundane items, especially the price and essence cost of Bio/Cyber/Nano/Genware, more affordable. While mages of course prefer from that too, it gives mundane person more gadgets, toys and possibilities.
- easier implementation of low level security/combat drones.
- Reduce the power of mundane scanners, or give better (and affordable) countermeasures against the dreadful cyberscanner. You can use alpha/betaware to increase your scanner stealth by a small degree, for a very high cost. In a stealth based game, this is a disadvantage.
- Perhaps even making counterspelling a normal mundane skill which helps even against spirit powers could bring some much needed dices to the defense of mundane enemies.
- reduce overcasting to magic +2 or magix 1x5 (or somethign like that)
- split mental and physical manipulation into manipulation and mind categories.
- reduce the number of bind spirits to charisma/2 or something - and/or make even karma bound spirits still count to the limit.



Of course, it depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you have something fundamental against the extreme flexibility of mages (Spell, spirit, astral projection/perception) then of course you will not be satisfied.

SYL

@apple
Yeah, because INITIATING is such a big deal. Just look at the meditation ordeal...
And not every mage needs to have this kind of power. One is enough, you know.
The point is, if you look at NPCs outside of street contacts, yes it seems fairly normal.

@Ascalaphus

Of course they should not come if no alert is triggert. Thats quite obvious. If you put them on patrol the amount of mages you would need, would skyrocket.
But this bullshit about, they are not allowed to attack mundane opposition if they are already on site?
Really?
YEAH, mundanes would be fucked. Thats part of the "Pro" side.
Of course they are not in competition with mundane security (well partly they are but only in the very high end of the market).
The point with "mind-controling" is, this "mind-controlling" is one of the most "non-violant" solutions.
Actually it is, in my opinion, morally not really that far away from tear gas. Does the same thing.
(Yes, to force them to other actions would be. So would be to apply any drugs to the tear gas)


I very much dislike it, to go at things from this direction. Rules like that make you bend the way the opposition is acting. Leading to an oppostion acting stupid because of metagame reasons.
Thats somehing I really do not like.

It would end like this:
PC-mage has masking: Strike team gets to side, sees only mundane and goes home. What a bullshit kind of security.

Yeah, like we all hate cops unless we need them...

"Yeah, of course your husband could still be alive, but we did not want to create resentments because we would have needed to stop the guy, who were mundane, with magic.
I think you understand."


Only the power of PC-mages for starters. So 6 levels of initiation is mostly overkill. But considering the fluff the leading mage might actually have those kind of power...
Again: I hate to do metagaming. From a metagaming point of view, yes this fucks up the PCs.

Rape is never non-violent.

SYL

@apple
Rape is not always a correct argument...

Mind Control would qualify, Influance... Not really.

I'll put out another idea to take mages down a little.

If infinite growth potential is a problem and magic 6+ means that uber spirits can be summoned at the drop of a hat, then don't let magic go above 6. (really they can already be summoned easily with 6 magic, but I think the fix for that of letting spirits use edge has already been beaten to death)

-Initiation still grants a metamagic ability.
-Initiation does not raise the maximum magic score.
-Initiation has a fixed cost of 10 karma per grade.
-Maybe allow magic lost due to essense loss to be recovered with initiation (though it still costs karma to raise the magic up again)

This will mean that starting mages that max out their magic abilities will not be able to become even more powerful, oh no!, they might have to diversify like everyone else. I see that as a plus. It also means that mages will suddenly have a use for money again. Their biggest growth potential is more powerful foci, or ware coupled with maintaining their magic through initiation. Adepts might get screwed a little in this equation, but in my experience they're usually better off with a mix of ware and powers anyway. And really, in setting if you are starting as a really powerful mage, you should already be bad ass and so it makes sense that you are reaching your limits.

And another. For direct combat spells, don't divide the force in half when determining drain. I get that indirect should be "harder" because it requires more energy. But you can justify it by saying that you are directly working hostile magic on a living creature and their aura resists the change you are trying to enforce. This logic works with a few of the more ridiculous or powerful manipulation spells* too, such as Turn to Goo, Shapechange, and Control [insert name] etc. that I have seen mentioned as other problem spells. Or make up whatever reason you need to say, if your players aren't happy with "It makes the game work better".

I apologize if these ideas have been mentioned before, I have not followed all of the thread. Now let me know what the problems are that I'm missing.

*Because does it really take almost as much energy to use a magical flashlight as it does to make someone into a marionette puppet?

For you and for me, maybe, but not for everyone. The things we want and like are not the things everyone wants and likes. Arguments over what's really fun can thus be more-or-less endless, because people are starting from different base assumptions.

You seem a little mad and sarcastic, Irion, but my answer to basically all your snide questions in that last post was a 'seriously, yes'. It's not metagaming when we're discussing game *design*.

Yeah, 3278, I said silly could be fun. I just also said that it can't be silly, while still being a coherent, 'living' world, in the sense of 'isn't PC-centric, responds in reasonable ways, can be immersive'.

@Yerameyahu
Mad, no not really. Sarcastic, yes a bit...
I think you did not get what I meant with "metagaming".
Of course if I make the rules, everything is "metagaming". It has to be like that.

The problem is, if you let the NPCs in game "metagame".
Act in a way to cover weaknesses in the rules.

@thorya
Actually a very good idea in general.
There are several ideas like that I have heard of.
Magic is restricted to Essence*1.5/*2 or the initiations are limited to "Essence".
All those ideas are quite good as far as I am concerned, because they deal with a major issue.

You do realize that Astral Hazing has aboslutely no effect on Ranged Combat Spells, Right? That team would fall like flies.

Is it metagaming, if (N)PCs find out through experience that SnS is very effective against anything sentient, because of its rules? Is it weird that they most likely carry that type of ammo and an protection against it?

@Dakka Dakka
Actually It would be the other way around.

The point is: If A is a good idea, there is no reason for the NPCs to always use B.

I guess that's why there always is the 1% rule.

What are normal wagemage wages, and what are normal security wages? How many security goons does a wagemage replace? These are economic questions to which not even the shadow of a rules answer exists.

Any answer you give is arbitrary. Any answer you give influences the plausibility of using MSS for anything else than magic, due to it's competitiveness vs. mundane security.

If it's economically attractive to replace goons with mages, then it makes sense that's what happens. But if it's not, then it makes sense that they won't get replaced. Whether it's attractive is entirely up to the GM's arbitrary setting of NPC wage levels.

Wage levels are an assumption provided by the GM. You can plausibly set the values so that it's not attractive to replace goons with mages, and only use mages to stop magic. Or you can do it the other way around. It is always meta. But in the first case you're doing it consciously in order to arrive at a desirable gaming setting.

---

All we have is a 1% figure, with no RAW information how many in that 1% are mages, how many are powerful, how many are sane (as opposed to religious maniacs/hallucinating shamans, which don't flourish in a corporate environment), and how many of the remainder work in security. It's so completely vague that any statement about the availability of security mages is complete GM fiat. Realize that you're metagaming to create the setting you actually want, and make the best of it.

---

As for legal reasons why wagemages may prefer to use magic only in self-defense and to protect against magical threats. Just look at the difference in firearms legislation across both the USA, and the entire world. Look at the complexity of those laws, in how they specify when you do and when you don't have just cause.

Legal systems have all sorts of strange twists. There is nothing unrealistic about that. Not that plausibility stopped many things in the SR setting from happening (NAN...)

So you can just GM-decide what kind of legal rules you want there to be, and work backwards and explain how those rules have come into being in the last 60 years, through the incomprehensible machinations of state vs. federal legislation and juridical precedent, as well as self-regulation by the industry and regulation by the executive branch, all affected by intense lobbying from factions ranging from left to right to total looney. Anything can be explained away.

---

Decide on the setting (economics, laws) you want, and reason your way backwards to explain how the setting you wanted came into being.

@Dakka Dakka
The thing is, the one percent rule, actually makes it much worse. Due to the lack of mages you have to centralise. One mage defending one building is MUCH too expensive.
But due to the rules 6 mages can defend 60 buildings all the same. While beeing probably much more effective than the one mage in the one building.

@Ascalaphus
The problem is as followed:
Fewer mages actually make it stronger, as I told Dakka Dakka, because you need to deal with magic "problems" in any case.
Fewer mages also means you have to make the most out of what you got. This means, you can't just put them on hold for "magical opposition" only. (Because if there are fewer mages, magical opposition will be... I think you get the point)

It all ends with the fact that if you put up a decent and credible astral defance, it will fry mundane on the go.
This has nothing to do with the kind of SR you play, that hardcoded in the rules on magic.

If you woul have rituals like wards, wich just inflict dicepool penalties on combat magic etc. it would be different.
But as it stands, the only way to counter a mage on side is another mage. (Or to shoot him, which is quite difficult if he acts smart)

Even if mages are rare the corps can still make tight magical security. give the make a couple of thousand ¥ in binding materials and he can put bound spirits in all of the ten buildings he is supposed to guard. The spirits as well as the mage can create wards. That is pretty good for one mage per ten buildings. Medical care shouldn't be a problem for the corps either so drain damage won't be an issue.

I don't see how this is worse than having more of those.

That would require a Charisma attribute of 10.

That's not true. Astral Hazing specifically states that it "affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in the vicinity of the character." If you try, you can read a normal background as only affecting the caster standing in it rather than a target standing in it being protected (and I will say that it's stupid to declare that it screws with sustained spells carried in but not spells cast in), but the specific rule supersedes the general, and the specific rule in this case explicitly states that Astral Hazing does, in fact, have an effect on Ranged Combat spells if they are cast on, at, or near the character in question. Combined with some specialized gear and tactics, and appropriate groundwork before going on a run, and no, they will not fall like flies. They will murder wizards.

Magic is powerful, but it's not an "I win" button, not even against mundanes.

For more on this thrilling debate, use Search. The actual answer is, 'your table GM *must* decide, and go with that'.

Isn´t that the general answer to nearly everything?

And if it works at all depends very much on how your GM handles services of spirits...

As Yerameyahu Stated... Look it up. By RAW, Background Count DOES NOT AFFECT Instantaneous Spells cast from outside the area of the Background Count. Combat Spells are Instantaneous. BGC only affects Sustained spells and effects (Including Permanment Spells during their Sustaining period), the Force of Foci and the Force of Spirits and the Magic ratings of thoise INSIDE the area of BGC. There has been HUGE amounts of debate upon this very topic. If you want the reference in the Books, See Street Magic, page 118.

I believe that even the Devs and Freelancers have weighed in on this exciting topic.

Hehe, it *is*, Machiavelli… except for the easy questions you keep reposting.

So if I understand you correctly magic is perfectly balanced so long as only 1% of the population has it? How does that work.

Here is the problem with SR in a nutshell you have a choice to be exceptional or to be quite literally mundane, there are very few drawbacks to being exceptional and many many drawbacks to being mundane. Exceptional characters can only be reasonably countered by other exceptional characters mundanes can be countered by anyone.

The actual problem lies in the functional definition of the word "Exceptional." I think that a Tir Ghost should generally be a threat to the average (Experienced, not just starting out) Shadowrunner. They are Exceptional, in my book. Unfortunately, unless you (Generic) can resist the urge to be better than the Tir Ghost at character generation, then he is not a challenge.

At our table, the Tir Ghost is a Chjallenge. Why? because we are "Average" shadowrunners with DP's in the 10-13 range.

From the point of a "world design": yes. Rare is rare and with that it is just a statistical anomaly.
From a point of "player balance design": no - since player group are always statistical anomalies, they need other considerations - see my suggestions in one of my previous posts.



Yes, when it comes to player groups.

SYL

Doesn't matter what Background Count says. Astral Hazing says that Astral Hazing affects all spells cast on, at, or near the person with the quality. It then goes on to say that it creates a background Count. Those are two different sentences. If there have been HUGE amounts of debate on this topic, then they have been sane people trying to convince the illiterate.

Astral Hazing "affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in the vicinity of the character." That's it. By RAW Astral Hazing DOES AFFECT all Spells cast from at the area of the character. Combat Spells are spells. AH affects all spells. Astral Hazing affects Combat Spells.

Also, saying that, by RAW, BGC doesn't affect Combat Spells cast in is like saying that, by RAW, a player can't get metallurgical information from a Talismonger contact because, even though they are listed as having the Metalworking skill, the only uses they have are for getting magical items, magic-related information, and additional contacts. It takes a willful misunderstanding of the English language to pretend the sentence "X has the following effects" means "X has ONLY the following effects."

The devs and freelancers can weigh in if they like, but if they are saying different than this, they are wrong. Being a dev doesn't give you special powers to change the rules unless you can get the rule change published. Being a freelancer gives you zero weight in a rules discussion beyond any other random person unless it's about the rules you wrote/are writing.

Once again, here's the short version: Astral Hazing "affects all attempts to cast magic on, at, or in the vicinity of the character." That's it. By RAW Astral Hazing DOES AFFECT all Spells cast from at the area of the character. Combat Spells are spells. AH affects all spells. Astral Hazing affects Combat Spells.

Arguing against this is rules-lawyering on the level of "that depends on what your definition of is is."

This is also assuming the rule isn't *crap*, which it totally is. This is reflected in the large historical debate, which I invited people to peruse at their own leisure.

Yeah, I ran a search and read a couple of threads on the subject. It kind of boggles my mind that in all the discussion about it, no one (that I saw) pointed out the simple fact that the rule explicitly states that Astral Hazing affects all spells cast at the person with the quality.

Now, if you want to say that you don't like the rule and want to change it, that's cool. House rules are pretty much a requirement for every system I've ever played (some more than others). Personally, I don't see what the issue with it is. It's a quality that I couldn't pay the players at my table to take, so it was a waste of ink for us. Maybe it's because we always played a rather magic-heavy game, but we saw a lot more friendly incoming spells and spirit powers than enemy ones, so it was deemed a terrible trade-off, and no one would touch it.

This is just not true. Actually this makes it even worse, because of the way you have to plan magical security, which also would work.
One percent does not prevent a group of four medium mages. Or even with initiation, depending on how hard it really is.

Due to the fact that a mage can annoy the crap out of mundane from the astral and is still able to cause a lot of damage while beeing nearly impossible to track, you need magical security.
And one mage is mostly not able to deal with them, due to how the rules work. (Teamwork on counterspelling etc.)
This means you have to get "astral-superiority" fast. But if the guards got "astral superiority"...
Then there is all the stuff NPC can use, because they do not need to care about cover..

The big problems in general are:
Unlimited growth:
Only a problem with high karma. Here the magical solution to becomes the best in every aspect. (An other spell still using the biggest pool is just better than building up a new pool)
The Astral:
2 Ini-Passes, invisibility to all mundane scanners and high movementspeed is just very good. And you are able to manipulate the "regular" world without really making you a target.
And if you prepared yourself you just get knocked back to your body...
Flexibility:
It is very close related to unlimited growth. You can pick your most loved spells and use them with the same skill. The spirits you even get with the skill.

That said, mages are not generally better. You need to play to their strengths and the GM can still stop you with GM-Fiat.

A mage beeing "on side" trying to throw stunbolts/balls at the opposition will probably not be more of a problem than a sam doing the same thing with grenades..

And it is still statistically unimportant - related to the world, no to player balance of course.

SYL

@apple
But it is very important on how you handle security. "The I put up a challange for the mage with one mage guarding the building-approach" is, considering the facts, fucking stupid. You are an open target for any kind of magical terrorism. One mage won't be able to fight several once. Even with bound spirits...
And the mundane security won't be any help.
Yes, a good way to be safe of astral violance is just put up a ward. But wards are not that easy to build up... Espacially the drain is getting really bad and the time you need to put it up.
Force 10-12 should be the max what a "normal" (noname) NPC could do regulary without risking major injouries (less then 3 points of physical damage each time) or even death.
And 12 takes allready 12 hours...
And still three or four mages can shoot down this ward quite quick...

Yes, it is. However the solution is IMHO not "make every third human a mage" since that would screw mundane intruders far more than magical intruder. The solution would be the make magical security more mundane, like FAB, GloMoss, astral backup etc - in the sense that you do not neccessarily need a mage online for at least a decent magical protection and anti-intruder solution. Combined with a small reduction of player mage power (see my previous comments) would lead IMHO to a far better solution both for the world setting and the player balance.

SYL

Totally true. But my points were more directed to the people who are both complaining that mages are too powerful and wrecking the game and then saying I don't put up any magical security. Especially when from a world point of view you can rationalize magical security at the locations the runners will be targeting. From the basic, people throw you against magical security because you have a mage and the mundane runners would get stomped to as apple pointed out mundane versions of magical security like fab you can have tons of magical security to limited magical security both rationally in the world and in ways that make the game more fun for the group. Maybe it is because we don't have mages breaking are games, but it isn't hard to put up a degree of magical security that would both be affordable and add a challenge(not screw the mage) to most adventures.

You know, that brings up another interesting point: there's been some presumption that magical security is necessary to defeat magical opponents. What things can a magical PC do on a run that mundane security can't reasonably deal with?

Get there astral and spam Spirits.

Or simply Stunbolt sniping. Or any number of Illusion tricks. Or Mind Control effects. This has all been mentioned already, surely?

@3278
Mostly they can't fight astral opponents. And if you just want to cause some destruction, beeing there "astral only" is quite a good idea. (And if you want to steal some data, you tell your spirits to rip out the mainframe, give it the air spirt and send it "to the meeting point")


PS: My list with "Big Problems" I forgot to mention unlimited range. This actually just becomes a problem talking about big targets. But anyway. (I think we had some mages powerbolting the moon once...)

@Shinobi Killfist
The problem is, doing it consistant with the world. You can't afford a mage hanging around 24/7 at your building. FAB only works for "knowing" there are astral targets.
It does not fight them. Unless you use FAB III, which will eat up your wards and other stuff....
Now you need a responseteam which does not know how many there are and how potent they are. So you need at least enough mages to deal with the worst assumed situation. (Yeah, this won't be 300 hundert mages with some ancient greek believe system. But 4 or even 5 are reasonable to assume in worst case...)

Yeah, it is the same with mundane security. But those guys (even if the briefing is AR on the drive there) need time to get to the position.
Depending on where they are, this can take just one minute on the one side, but even one hour is easy to explain. (The guys in Norway needed several hours...)
Thus giving the runners time to run!

Can't really Spam Spirits, Though, because Mundane Security can handle those as well. Now, If you are allowing your PC's to casually summon Spirits with High Ratings, This may be an issue, but it has NEVER been an issue at our table. AS for Astral Investigations. Wards Handle that little problem quite nicely. Even a Peasly Low-Force Alarm Ward is good (As they are generally not noticeable until you have already passed through them).

Okay, excellent. And what effect does that have on the intruders?


How's that, again? No one I can think of in Shadowrun has anything like unlimited range. What do you mean?


Depending on when you were playing, you probably shouldn't have been able to do that.

Do you think it would be reasonable to limit spellcasting to visual range categories just like with guns? Perhaps the same as a sniper rifle - generous, but at least limited?

I think it is reasonable. Maybe a bit too reasaonable, persoanlly, since most humans cannot perceive minute details (and often even gross details) at those extreme ranges, at all, without visual aids.

True, but that's why you'd get penalties at those extreme ranges, just like you get when using a gun without using visual aids.

Exactly, I was more concerned with providing Sniper Rifle Ranges as the baseline. But your point is valid.

I would give Sporting Rifle Ranges (with etreme extended to 1.5km). The targeting action would be possible with (optical/implanted) vision magnification to reduce the range penalty.