I am about ready to do away with direct combat spells in my game. The fact that a mage can make one attack roll against a targets will (plus any counter spelling) and cause damage without any secondary roll to resist damage is just so broken. When every other form of combat in the game requires an attack roll and (if it beats the defenders attempts to dodge) a damage resistance roll, the rules for direct combat spells seems very out of place. Having said that, has any one done this? If so what did it do to thegame?
Thanks

The biggest thing you can do for direct spells is give the targets a full defense test, and then a soak test. Maybe not get RID of direct combat spells, but give them AP half instead of ignoring armor completely, or perhaps ap = 1/2 force.(so elemental combat spells are still worth it)

I agree, the whole 'dodge and soak is part of the same roll' is kind of broken, expecially when the mage rolls 2-3 dice pools vs a defender's of 1.

There are some optional rules that increase the drain for direct combat spells, but that's not really the issue - the brokenness of the base rules is.


I would also really consider houseruling Overcasting to, i think, tymeaus's rules: If you overcast, it still does stun damage, but the force/2 part of force calculations is removed. So an overcasted stunbolt (force/2-1) becomes force-1 drain.
This makes mages think twice about popping off force 12 spells willy nilly, and also prevents them from deliberately casting physical drain spells so they don't drop unconscious from drain.

I don't see it as broken, although I agree it is a step away from how they do everything else. I'll follow this thread, and I hope you post your results because frankly if someone presents a valid, well reasoned line of thought that is better than what i have I'll use it!

I changed the drain for direct combat spells by +3, for indirect combat spells by -1 and for elemental effects by -1 and got rid of the stun modifier. Elemental damage type (P/S) is now determined by the elemental effect, eg. lightning spells now only make "S" damage.

Also, i would like to introduce "indirect mana spells", simple balls of mana which can only affect living things. They would be defended against with reaction, and soak would be willpower+counterspelling

The specific concern is defending against direct spells. Thus, instead of modifying the spell or its drain, it would be best to modify the spell defense instead.
I would recommend resisting direct spells using 2x Willpower (+ counterspelling), which should better balance out the opposed dice pools. It’s simple and changes nothing on the mage’s character sheet.

If you just resist with 2*WIL instead of WIL, direct spells are a bit weaker than before but nonetheless vastly superior than indirect combat spells

Indirect spells have their uses... like taking out a drone... right tool for the right job

Yeah, F6 Wreck Vehicle killes drones and has 3 drain, if you have enough dice to beat the threshhold.

Try comparing indirect combat spells to firearms.
Indirect have one drawback that firearms don't.
They have drain and firearms don't.
If you change direct combat spells to work similarly to indirect ones then you end up with a mage that would be better off using a firearm in a fight.
Right now the balance between combat spells and firearms is broken in favour of magic.
Almost all games that have magic have this problem, and generally the more experience the mage gets the greater the imbalance becomes.
Unfortunately for Shadowrun the imbalance starts right at character creation.
If you change direct combat spells so that they get Intuition in place of Reaction for the Dodge aspect and then Willpower to resist damage I think that's better,
but I also think that the drain taken from direct damage spells should increased as well.
For game balance something that's harder to resist should have a higher drain than something that's easier to resist.
When you compare direct and indirect this is not the case. I would give indirect a +3 with the above dice rolls.

Both Manabolt and Clout are F/2.
Manabolt casting is Spellcasting + Magic, resisting currently is Willpower + Counterspelling
Clout casting is Spellcasting + Magic, resisting currently is Reaction + Counterspelling, then Body + half impact
These two spells shouldn't have the same drain. Manabolt is way more powerful.
Changing Manabolt so that it uses Intuition + Counterspelling and then Willpower with zero armor at a +3 drain seems more inline with things for me.
I would add a +3 to all direct combat spells drain and give people the above rolls.

If you insist on "fixing" direct combat spells, I would recommend one roll of Willpower (or Body) to resist the spell, then another roll of Willpower (or Body) to soak the damage, rather than one roll of double Willpower, which will too often make the spell completely ineffective. But let targets have the equivalent of full defense - they can get double Willpower (or Body) on the initial resistance test, but it costs them an action as they concentrate on resisting the spell. That would make direct combat spells a lot more similar to normal ranged combat, mechanics-wise.

If you do that, though, then you should also remove the limiters on direct combat spells. Don't cap hits any more, make counterspelling cost an action to use rather than being free extra dice for everyone, and make things like background count much rarer.

Without direct combat spells you need to do something for indirect combat spells. There needs to be something in the mages arsenal that compares well to using a firearm even with drain considered.

They actually have another-- their damage doesn't decrease, you negate. If I shoot you with a gun, and you get more soak hits than I got to hit you-- you then start to stage down my damage. If the same rolls happen with a spell, you negate my spell. So if I cast a F12 manabolt, you don't have to stage it down.




Manabolt can only effect the living, you can actually push buttons with Clout or break a vase. Not much of an advantage, but it's something. Indirect spells are tame compared to how bad conjuring is. If you disagree, then figure out how easy it is to some a F8 spirit of man-- who then can also cast that indirect combat spell you know with 16d pool, and a ridiculous melee defense pool.

How is that a drawback? If i dodge your shot, then i negate your firearms damage ... if i don't dodge it, then i have the chance to reduce the damage.

Also, spells have a huge advantage over firearms - you never run out of ammo, they are subtle (direct spells only), and than there is the "cyberware scanner" that detects every weapon with 1 hit.

Normal ammo is so cheap that running out doesn't really matter. Even stuff like SnS and Ex-Ex is cheap compared to the money available during CharGen.

Also, there are weapons that don't show up to the cyberware scanner. But the amount of cyberware scanners is definitely something you should talk about with the GM.

Buying ammo is not the problem, bringing tons of ammo with you is the problem. But if your GM lets you sneak in hundreds of bullets without getting noticed (olfactory scanner ^^), then you dont have that problem.

There are some weapons that don't show on a MAD-scanner, but i know of none that circumvents a cyberware scanner while being functional (WW Infiltrator, SA Puzzler).

I don't think you need to worry too much. A skilled shooter with an SMG is more deadly than a mage with stunbolt. Sure, mages have plenty of awesome tricks, but so do cyberguys, riggers, hackers... the list goes on. A good defence against spellcasters is cover and visibility (including carrying around some smoke grenades - yes they also reduce a shooters dice pool, but the shooter can afford to lose attack dice more than a mage - his pool will be bigger to begin with) ... and of course friendly counterspelling (inc a borrowed spirit with counterspelling) works wonders.

Here's another direct combat spell fix idea: remove the "+ net hits" part of the "Force + net hits" equation for damage.

Don't forget, that - at least technically - you get more dice to resist a direct combat spell than you get to dodge a bullet.

Willpower + Counterspelling (Attribute + Skill) vs. just Reaction (Attribute)

Granted, you can use full defense (but that costs you an action) and for combat-oriented characters Reaction is likely much higher than Willpower, too.

And, of course, you need a mage with Counterspelling in the first place, to get those dice.

But it's still something to keep in mind.

Bye
Thanee

P.S. Oh, and for drones there is Power Bolt.

Willpower + Counterspelling (Attribute + Skill) vs. just Reaction (Attribute) + Body + Armor

Only if you keep the force slow enought, noticing spell casting has a treshold of 6-Force so at force 6 and higher there's no need for a test at all, everyone just notices it.

No there are not.

well, they only notice that you cast magic when they look at you.



So if a eagle shapeshifter mage casts a stunball from 1km height at you, (nearly) nobody will notice it. If i fire an assault cannon, everyone in 3km+ radius will hear it.

Ah, yes, a cyberware scanner notices non-biological items and identifies them based on "shape, location and composition", if it's in the scanner's database. That means that you could disguise a weapon, by disguising its shape and composition as something innocuous. For example, the puzzler guns, which break apart into pieces that look like jewelry.

Presumably composition refers to the actual materials, though? 'My, what durable jewelry you're carrying…' I dunno, it's all handwavium anyway. I still agree that a solution is to make these magic scanners more realistically bulky and expensive, and short-range; metal detectors are easy, these really shouldn't be.

Those particular guns are pretty crappy, though, when you go back to comparing combat effectiveness against the direct spells. It's no longer a modded Ares Alpha we're talking about.

True. I suppose that in the process of making the magic rules "simple and easy", they also sterilized. While it makes sense flavorwise for a shaman or hermetic to be carrying all kinds of ritual implements and fetishes (which a cyberscanner would detect!), there's no more mechanical need for that anymore.

Yeah, the cyberscanner would detect the fetish, but i would not identify it as a fetish.

It depends what they're made out of. These things can literally be anything, right?

Iirc, they can be anything. To really identify a fetish you would need assensing or an assaying kit.

However, all hermetics who studied at a particular college might use the same fetishes, which could be in the scanner's database.

Yes. And assuming they're scannable.

While they can literally be anything, any fetish not implanted to concealed under clothing will probably include visible amounts of the kind of enchantable radicals & reagants you need to include to actually enchant the item. While you could spend your time concealing the radical you've included, chances are that most fetishes will reflect the tradition of the creating mage and will not conceal the radical included in its creation, unless it was specifically crafted to conceal both.

A hermetic mage may craft a Seal of Solomon, a native shaman may craft a bone and feather trinket, and an Astruar may craft runestones, but in almost no cases will they conceal what these objects are unless they have explcitly decided to do so. I'd give someone a Magic Background check (after a successful perception check) to notice that an object may be a fetish, though they couldn't confirm that without assensing. It's long been part of the game's fluff that fetishes are observable objects that people will notice and think, "This person may be a caster, or a person into magey accessorization at least."

So, *if* they show up on the scanner, then a very comprehensive library (or skilled person actively watching) might notice possible fetishes/foci. :/ Doesn't seem in the same ballpark as weapons to me.

Just hook a "PocketMage Library" to the scanner (altough this thing costs about 10x of the scanner)

Meh, I disagree to an extent. It's not about recognizing things for the specific fetishes they are, but about noticing abnormalities. If I don't need more than 1 dot in "Firearms background" to recognize an implanted weapon, I don't need more than that to recognize that implanted wierdness MAY be an attempt to smuggle something in.

Don't think of it as "can the operator identify it as a fetish, and what kind of fetish it is." Think of it like this: can the scanner operator see it's not a normal part of the body, and is he liable to question what it is? If you've eaten a tin of nails because you're some kind of compulsive person, I - as a scanner operator - am not liable to question "Are these nails a cyberwear mod I am familiar with, and if not, I will let it pass". I'm going to say, "Dude, this guy has sharp objects in him, I dunno if it's a bomb or he's crazy, but we need to ask him some questions." This is a bit like airport security people now - assuming they're paying attention, they're not stopping you when they recognize a bomb. They're stopping you when they see anything out of the ordinary, including that can of shaving cream that's over 3 ounces.
Same deal if you have crystals and other objects implanted in you. If they're not disguised to look specifically like something that belongs there - such as cyberarm actuators, or pins in a bone, or whatever - they're going to stand out as WTFery.

What operator? We're talking about pattern-matching software, which specifically is matching weapon shapes. And I only said 'possible fetish/focus', no details.

Any area/building with a cyberwear scanner that is actually serious about security will include an human somewhere in the loop to check the scanner's results when they come back with an "I don't know what this is" result. Nobody's going to let an automated machine turn up results of "Unknown metal/crystalline objects in left leg" and merrily allow them through because that combo doesn't match any known cyberwear. In fact, a result of "I don't know what that is" is more likely to result in scrutiny than a known result.

Including a human in a scanning process is like, seriously non-negotiable for areas serious about staying secure. If they're not serious and are completely automated, they're probably using shitty scanners anyway.

That's probably true, but that's both not what we were talking about, and vastly more expensive than the dirt-cheap scanner. Presumably, there'd be a massive false-positive rate if it's just returning everything it *doesn't* recognize. And we're still assuming the scanner can physically see fetishes; I just wanna know if this is a good assumption.

Well, I think the only fuzzy part is that the cyberwear scanners detect "all non-biological matter" in the subject "as long as it's in their database." I'm assuming there is a protocol for detecting things NOT on their database, since said database won't include all possible varieties of IEDs that could be implanted in people - and detecting IEDs seems to be high on the list of things I'd want a milimeter wave scanner to do. We know the scanner can SEE any fetish that's non-biological (I.E. almost all of them). We just don't know what it does when it sees something it doesn't recognize.

My assumption is that for things a scanner doesn't recognize, people somewhere along the line vet or reject as things to allow through, and enter those objects into a database somewhere that then gets pushed to the scanner, and keeps it up to date. Higher device ratings therefore are not just scan quality - since on any measurable real world level, a milimeter wave scanner capable of scanning a body has very little variance in image quality - but also in the database.

I.E. a rating 1 scanner doesn't scan much worse than a rating 6, but it has a shitty library and is biased towards letting people through unless they have obvious weapons with no associated permit. A rating 6 scanner has a vast library, and is capable of recognizing esoteric implants due to tens of thousands of one-off entries captured at other locations and other people.

Edit: I should say "A milimeter wave scanner capable of scanning objects in a body has very little variance in image quality if we are to assume a rating 1 and rating 6 can theoretically detect the same types of cyberwear. I.E. since a rating 1 scanner can detect a tiny chip in your head if it's standard cyberwear, and so can a rating 6 but the rating 6 will do so much more often, the difference in reliability must be in terms of object recognition, not actual detection.

Why does the mage have implanted fetish, cos yeah thats likely to raise much more flags then a non implanted one.
But even if implanted, how does the low paid scanner operator reconize fetishes from common fashion items.

Generally fashion items aren't implanted inside the body, where no one can see them? Since the purpose of fashion is the be publicly visible?

And once again, why is the fetish implanted inside the body, thats just weird.

I dunno, cuz people started talking about Cyberscanners, so I assumed we'd gone to a tangent about implanted fetishes, or fetishes inside cyberlimb storage?

well, the cyberscanner doesn't just detect implanted things, it also detects all external things

Back to the original question; what have people done to fix direct combat spells? Why would simply doing away with direct combat spells be a badd thing? Above it was said that if you did away with direct combat spells a mage should just pick up a gun, are indirect combat spells (such as fireball or lightning bolts) so underpowered?

well, the drain value of indirect combat spells is too high

The balance points are as follows:

1) Spellcasting dice are harder to come by than shooting guys dice. A starting mage who's casting-heavy will have between 10 and 16 dice to lay on the hurt. The only way to really increase that is with vast amounts of money, vast amounts of Karma, or dedicating spirits to assisting you - which costs money and time unto itself. You have your Magic rating and your spellcasting rating, which will generally be 5 and 5 to start with. You can get a specialization for another +2, and a mentor spirit for another +2, but that's as far as she goes. Past there, you buy your skill up and your Magic up, and that's it.

2) Spellcasting is a complex action while shooting a guy is a simple action (or a complex action if you REALLY wanna shoot a guy with ALL THE BULLETS). If you balance out casting an individual spell with shooting an individual bullet, there is no benefit for casting direct combat spells, because mechanically you will always be better off shooting twice than casting once. This works for Indirect Spells because of the elemental effects - if a GM consistently applies the secondary effects, it allows for lateral thinking in combat. Since Direct Spells have no secondary effects, why - given the same number of attack/defense rolls - would I ever choose to cast once, instead of shooting twice?

3) Counterspelling is more prevalent than it seems. Any opposition that has magical support probably has counterspelling. If a mage has 5 dice of counterspelling, he doesn't split them among his allies - any ally he can apply counterspelling to, he can apply ALL of his counterspelling to. That means any opposition that has a caster will probably have between 3 to 6 dice of extra resistance.

4) Remember penalties to casting. These include visibility penalties, cover penalties that are also visibility-related (casting through foliage, for instance) and background count. For instance, let us suppose we are in a small background count area - a violent area of the streets. Let's suppose it's evening and light is dim, but I have thermographic vision. I am casting a spell at you, but you are mostly obscured. I have 5 Magic, 5 Spellcasting, and a rating 2 Mentor Spirit. That's 12 dice to kill you with. But the dim light reduces my die pool by 2. The background count reduces my Magic by 1, which reduces my die pool AND the maximum force I can cast at without overcasting. The obscurement between us further reduces my die pool by 1 as well. From 12 dice and a force 5 spell to 9 dice and a force 4 spell. I can realistically expect 3 successes on my spellcasting. Supposing this is a mana spell and you have 3 willpower, I can expect to do 6 damage to you, which isn't bad.

And then you shoot back at me twice.

I really have to remember to use visibility penalties on spell casters. Would partial cover apply as well though do you think? The reason I ask is the discription for alot of the spells simply says line of site. If the caster can see the targets foot then he has line of site and the wall the target is hiding behind does nothing.

A starting sam who's shooting-heavy will have between 12 and 16 dice to lay on the hurt. The only way to really increase that is with vast amounts of money and essence and vast amounts of Karma (for skill 7 or raising AGI)
AGI 9, Skill 6, spec 2, reflex recorder 1, smartlink 2 = 20 dice for shooter (+tacnet), nearly no room for expansion (exept stuff like aptitude and exceptional attribute)
MAG 6, Skill 6, spec 2, mentor 2, power focus 4 = 20 dice for mage (+ bound/ally spirit), theoretically unlimited expansion


Well, because you can stunball everyone in your FOV, which is vastly superior to throwing grenades. Also, getting a high reaction is a trivial exercise (you can get up to 10 Points of REA with cyber- & bioware), whereas augmenting willpower is not that easy. Also, your targets do not get a soak roll for damage (this is really critical if you go against some famous tank troll)


That means the opposition has from 2-12 dice to resist the mage, who has up to 20 dice (even more with bound spirits) to fry them.


Now I, the gang leader with a heavy pistol (incl. laser sight) shoot back at you. I have AGI 5 (3 + used muscle replacement 2) and skill 4 with a specialization. Due to vision penalities, i loose 2 dice. The obscured FOV applies to me too, another die lost. The 6 damage you dealt me cost another 2 dice, and the 27m distance between us means this is medium range for my pistol, -3 for me. So i have now 4 dice to shoot you on the first attempt, and 3 on the second. You can try to evade them with reaction (50/50 chance with REA 3-4), and then you are going to soak the damage with Body+Armor, eg. 9-12 dice (BOD 3-4 with max armor). If you stunball me from more than 40m away, your pool doesn't change, but mine drops by another -3.

I generally regard it as such. While it doesn't explicitly state this is the case, if visibility problems can impede casting, then cover should as well, especially given the book's cautions against allowing players to block out their LOS against allies in the midst of enemies in order to lob AOE Direct Spells.



That's not entirely true. A shitty street sam will only have 12 to 16 dice. A serious street sam will probably have between 14 and 20, more likely 16 and 20. Let's break it down.

A starting mage with a die pool of 20, as you say, has paid: 15 BP to be a mage, 65bp to get Magic 6, 24bp to get Spellcasting 6, 5bp for a Mentor Spirit, 2 BP for a Specialization in Combat Spells, and can only start with a power focus rating 2, because anything higher is too high of an availability. Let's not get into Restricted Gear qualities, because that opens many more doors for street sams than it does mages. But a rating 2 power focus costs 12bp - 10 for the money and 2 bp to bond.
Total Cost: 123BP.
Die Pool: 20.


A starting street sam, on the other hand, pays nothing to be alive. Let's say he raises his Agility to 6 for 65bp and his firearms skill of choice to 6 for 24BP. He pays 2BP to specialize in whatever subclass of gun he wants to rock out with. He then spends 5BP to start with on gear, and buys a Smartlink for 1,000, Reflex Recorder for 10,000, and Muscle Toner 2 for 10,000. Remainder of the money goes to armor and a gun.
Total cost: 96 BP
Die Pool: 19.

Are you seriously suggesting that "potentially" unlimited growth - but that is ACTUALLY extremely limited, because the Street Samurai can spend less money to increase his die pool - is worth 27 build points? If the street sam was willing to lose 2 more points of die pool from his Agility and weapon skill of choice, he'd have spent 56 less build points than the mage. And he doesn't even have a tacnet yet.


No, augmenting willpower is not easy, but I don't know about saying it's "vastly superior to throwing grenades" - I can get an automatic grenade launcher for a trivial amount of money and challenge that assumption. I can fire those grenades into places I can't see, whereas if you can't see me, you can't hit me *at all*.


That's true, but the same is true of people shooting at you: if you go full defense, you'll have less dice than the people shooting, owing to the fact that there are more ways to add to shooting than dodging bullets.



Whoa whoa. Base attribute 3, skill 4, and no smartlink, against this mage? In this example, your gang leader is SEVERELY underpowered compared to the caster.

For equal build points we should include a smartlink, for one, bumping base die pool from 11 to 13. Then increase his base AGI and gun skill by 1 each, which takes the pool to 15. Let's leave aside for the moment the fact that he should also get a Trauma Dampener, a biomonitor, and an auto-injector with Stim chems, because while *I* always do that, others do not.

So his net pool is 15, and he loses 1 from the cover. However, a ganger with half a brain will have low-light AND thermo in his eyes/goggles, whereas the mage needs to suck up essence loss for that, or can't cast anyway. So the ganger loses 0 to lighting conditions. He does take wounds, and loses another 2 dice for that. That drops him from 15 dice to 12 dice. Who says we're at medium range? I guess you do, so okay. Another -3. 9 dice. However, that's 9 dice per shot - it's like 100 nuyen to put a customized grip in your pistol. Not doing it is rank stupidity. So zero recoil. On average, that's 3 hits and 3 hits. Mages generally don't have a super-stellar reaction, though, so you're probably rocking 3-4 REA to dodge. On average, 2 hits on each.
What's the gun do? 5P -1Armor? Okay. But who loads standard rounds? Let's stick some ex-ex in that, cuz again, it's cheap and readily available. So that becomes 6p -2 armor.

If the mage isn't an asshat he's rocking an armored jacket that's been custom fitted so his body doesn't matter for encumberance. Since I'm assuming the mage isn't an asshat, he has this. Body 3, we'll say. Body 3+8 Ballistic, -2 for armor penetration? Okay, that's 9 dice. He'll soak 3 on average, and still takes 5 physical damage each shot.

If our ganger was packing an SMG or an assault rifle, shit gets way worse for the mage in a hurry. This is why if the mage wanted to end shit in a hurry, he should suck up the risk, overcast the mana spell to force 6 to 8 and hope for the best. If he doesn't wanna do that, cast it as I outlined before, and use a free action to drop prone so the ganger doesn't have LOS to fire back. Then the mage can pop on improved invisibility, roll Infiltration, and try and get the drop on the ganger again. And lest you say this proves the mage is better, what if the ganger got the drop on the mage, rather than vice versa? The two bullets will still, on average, kill the mage dead. And the ganger can drop prone behind an object too, rendering the mage's direct combat spells useless.

Unless you are stacking the deck in the mage's favor, if we are assuming equal money/karma, and tactical intelligence, shit is much more even than it seems at first blush.

Let's face it, the only real drawback to being a mage is keeping a high essence; which means little to no augmentation. Mages can get 'augment equivalents' with new spells, but this costs them karma, time and money, as oppose to just time and money. The fact that a mage can easily hurt you by just looking at you, and there is little most can do to prevent it, more than compensates!

No one sane would ever suggest being a mage is a "drawback", no. With the possible exception of the Fab III salesman.

But as you say: many people tend to see that a mage has theoretically unlimited advancement and shit bricks, when in actual play, advancement is definitely quite limited. Every karma you spend in one spot is karma you cannot spend doing something else, and Nuyen buys mages a lot less of their "schtick" then it does for cyberjunkies.