If a mage has the same spell cast upon them from multiple sources, do the effects stack? What if the mage casts the same spell upon herself multiple times (and sustains all the instances)?

complicated issue . . usually, only highest bonus counts . .

So a mage couldn't sustain multiple Force 6 armor spells on herself simultaneously?

Well, he could - but i would not let the armor stack

In that case, and assuming sustaining foci cap at force 6 (which appears to be a common convention, although I cannot find rules support for it), how does a mage get a respectable armor rating?

Oversummon high force spirit, have spirit overcase armor spell and sustain it while possessing him.

By wearing a respectable armor, of course - MilSpec armor stacks with the Armor spell

Ummmmm... What do you consider respectable?

There are people who say that everything, even duplicate effects, stack (by default). Those people are probably crazy, but maybe not. It depends more on your table and your GM, than what 'is RAW' (who cares?).

Seeing as how mages are often the first targeted, I'd like at least 15/15, preferably more, especially since I have so few boxes on my physical track (Body 3). Also, MilSpec armor is not really an option because this is supposed to be for walking around day-to-day...

It seems that there are gaps in RAW one could drive a truck through, making DnD 3.5e look watertight by comparison... oy vey...

They went to a lot of trouble to make 3.5 watertight, so that's to be expected. Luckily, as I said, you don't have to worry what's RAW. Just read it, and then do what's good.

15/15 means you can stop a HMG, an assault cannon, a sniper rifle, a LAW rocket, or a vehicular Light Autocannon. … Who did you piss off? Besides, you can get to 12/12 just by wearing 6/6 armor with your Body 3 and stacking an Armor 6 spell on. That's pretty close, and enough to stop so many things.

No, you can't really stop it . . you just take more stun damage than physical i think . .

The PCs, which generally have between 15 and 20 dice in their preferred combat skill, this is for a (very likely hostile) prime runner. That's also why I'm asking the forum for advice, "ask your GM" doesn't help when you're the GM .

You generally do it the same way mundanes do it. Chop off limbs and get cyberlimbs with armor. Depending on how you GM feel, you might be able to get your "average" body to count for encumbrance* and thus be able to wear more worn armor as well.

Also the armor spell is terrible if you want it for walking around. It makes you glow and screams "I'm a mage!" to everyone.

*-I assume this is the case, but there really is not direct quote for or against this.

Edit- Oh you're the GM. You might also to look at Umaro's Burnout Combat Mage for a tough spellcaster.

This particular runner has public awareness 11, so screaming "I'm a mage!" to everyone is not really new territory for her. She also would lose way too much magic from the essence loss associated with 'ware, in addition to it being totally out-of-character for her to even consider it.

EDIT: We're way off the original topic, but I guess I got my answer; at my table, similar effects don't stack.

That's what I meant, Stahlseele, but certainly yes. But no amount of armor would do that.

OP, guns are just deadly. I don't think the solution is to make the NPC a literal tank, but instead for him to be a smarter target, you know? Armored vehicles, guards (inc. spirits), stealth, reasons they can't just hose him, etc.

You can also (and personally I don't like it) cast Armor into the focus using Edge to break the hit cap? Meh.

Yeah, but it making approaching the PCs much harder as well as everyone else in the area.

Do you have a sheet? Depending on how she's built, there's several ways to armor her up. Increase Body + armor stacking + armor spell should let you get up pretty high. You'll be a SWAT wearing glowing avatar of doom that the PCs will likely see a mile away, but it'll work.

I'm heavily retooling the sheet, since she was originally statted out when I was first learning the system and thought 6/6 was plenty of armor. The issue with SWAT armor and similar is that the fluff doesn't really fit. She styles herself after a sorceress from swords and sorcery type novels, and as such wouldn't wear any bulky armor.

EDIT: Using Edge to break the hit cap might work.

EDIT2: One of my players, a cybered-out ork martial-artist, can generally take a Panther XXL shot without flinching. Given a decently skilled (12 pool) shooter, and an average number of hits(1 in 3). 12 means 4 hits, minus 2 for 6 reaction, so a modified DV of 12P, versus 29-5 ballistic armor and a soak pool of 12 (10 BOD + ceramic bone lacing) = 36, or 12 hits, making the net damage 0S.

Maybe she needs Slow, then. People hate that spell, hehe.

Even my players hate that spell. I didn't even have to forbid it myself, they did it for me

Slow gives her plenty of time to cackle arrogantly and taunt the party. It's perfect. (Although it took me looking through 4 books to find it.)

EDIT: RAW, that shit stops a Freya shot, if cast at force 10...

You can actually go pretty far with armor clothing though you'll be wearing a steampunk dress instead of a true S&S bikinis. You can also just keep the spells sustained with Psyche. That'll let you keep 2 spells for only a -2 to your dice pools.

However if you're doing mage versus the party battle, you might just want her to hang back and just send a group of bound spirits at the PCs. It's just as subtle as a glowing mage and they don't have to worry about walking down the street. She can be hanging out on the astral plane, in a car, or up in a building.

Edit- It also sits with the S&S theme since mages in those books always liked to hang back and let minions do the work.

Alright...

- Sustained Deflection spell Force 6; +6 dice pool defending against ranged attacks.
- Sustained Combat Sense spell Force ?; add successes to Reaction for Surprise and defending against ranged and melee (if this is capped at maximum augmented Reaction or not at your table determines the force)
- Sustained Armor spell Force 6; armor 6/6
- Sustained Increase Body spell to push her Body up to augmented maximum.
- Sustained Reinforce spell on her armor to push it up to max what she can carry without penalties.

Assuming a human, you should get at least 9+6 dice for defense against ranged attacks, and an Armor rating of 26/23

Armor Jacket w/Reinforce 6: 14/12
Formfitting Half-suit: +4/+1
PPP System excluding helmet: +2/+4
(counts as 18/16 for encumbrance - doable with Body 9)
Armor spell: +6/+6

Edit: If you go with the chainmail instead as per the post below, change the armor to 8/13; total 20/24

...or use whatever armor you want and cast a Fashion spell on it...

Chainmail-Bikini.

I feel like no one ever gave a good argument that Reinforce increases the worn-armor stat of an item, only its Barrier stats?

Yeah, I wouldn't let players have Slow, but if it's specifically for an archmage Big Bad… *shrug*

Going back to the original topic for a second, both Increase [Attribute] and Increase Reflexes explicitly limit it to one instance active at a time, implying this is not the default. The rabbit hole goes deep...

It seems that a kitten kaboodle of smaller spells is the way to go, instead of a couple big, uber ones. Guess I'm still in a DnD mindset.

EDIT: Not so much a big bad as a reminder to the party that there's always someone stronger; but with a bit subtlety that Lofwyr dropping in and being like, "Sup?".

Well, you just use 'Shooting through Barriers' rule then, which is much the same except that the armor rating is doubled against edged weapons...
But it does say that a barrier's armor rating acts as normal armor rating. By logic it should work the other way around as well, then.

Of course, it says 'an object' which would mean you'd have to cast it on a single object - chainmail may be out, but a robe should work.

My suggestion (if you dont have all your spells set already) is to use deception as opposed to durability. Illusion spells, phantasms, invisibilty, etc.

You can really mess up a players world with a few well placed glamours.

Make your mage appear to be Standing right out in the open talking to your players, and if/when they try to shoot her, have the phantasm ready to respond as though she waves her hand and the bullets "weave" around her.

Remember, "Age and Treachery will always win over Youth and Skill"

Yes, snowRaven, but I don't think there's a transparent way of resolving the difference between worn armors and barriers. There are no rules for wearing barriers, for example. I also feel like if Reinforce was supposed to to the exact same thing as Armor spell… they wouldn't have done it.

There is no actual rule in Shadowrun that prevents you from benefiting form the same spell more than once. There are spell effects which end up redundant (like Detect Enemies) or have built in limiters (like Raise Attribute) but for the most part you would follow the rules as normal.

Armor is a perfect example

The the game calculates Ballistic/Impact is by a +/- system. Since armor adds +X to your B/I, it will continue to do so with every cast. Things like "the highest takes effect" is from DnD or other systems that has nothing to do with Shadowrun.
Now whether you can Sustain enough castings to be useful is another issue, and IMO a perfect inbuilt limiting factor.

Like I said. You have to choose for your table. Trying to divine the RAW in this case is much less important. (I feel like there's no rule that you can't wear 3 helmets, for example.)

Now, to be STRICTLY honest, there is no actual rule stating you can't (and the PPP helm seems to support that). Common sense and RAI would say otherwise. HOWEVER! you will then have to start dealing with Encumbrance, and depending on the character that may be a bad thing.

Really though its been a moment since I looked trough those rules, there actually could be something that limits you to only 1 helm.

Um, Public Awareness could be pretty easily bypassed with a bit of disguise. Nanopaste. A scarf, hat and sunglasses.

Or stealth.

Or a distraction consisting of a hired troll ganger with a brand new minigun.

Or, depending on location, being behind a window in a building across the street. You can see out, but they won't be seeing you. And direct spells don't point out the shooter if you can't already see him.

May I suggest, if you really want a face-to-face conflict, also using that wonderful manipulation spell, Deflection. Not getting hit is better than armor.

Hehe, right. It's just an example, as you say, that common sense, RAI, and (I say) group choice are more important than RAW. For duplicate-spell-stacking in SR4, common sense and RAI could go either way, which leaves group choice.

There are two other very powerfull buffs: Improved Invisibility and Levitate.

The first makes you undetectable by sight (even if you attack or cast a spell) and the other removes the sound of your footsteps as well as giving you extra angles of attack.

If you really want to screw your players have the mage develop a multisense version of Improved Invisibility.

Once those two spells are on, either start increasing your defense and/or soak pool or start casting Control Thoughts at the street sam.

>There are no cap on force of a foci, so get a force 10 for a better spell.
But really the real start is the same as anyone else, get an actually respectable Body score, 5 leats you get 10 armor.

Actually 5 BOD and 3 STR gives 16/14 from FFBA+PPP set+Softweaved Armor Jacket. Just ask any of my players .

Edit cos of failure with math:
No you cant that combo counts as 10/13 for encumbrance.
The softweawe only slowers the higher of the two values for encumbrance purposes.

Sorry making you post seem pointless Stahlseele

Have you seen what people are wearing?

That's a way of reading it I hadn't considered previously, but I don't think it's the intended way. I believe the "highest rating" clause refers to stacking armor.

@Ragewind

The point several people here are raising is, that Shadowrun kind of has different "modifieres" and they kind of stack differentl but it is nevery spilled out.

For example:
Muscle augmentation raises your agility by X. But if you later on raise your agility you use your raiting withoug the X)
Beeing an elf raises your natural agility by one (and raises your natural maximum and therefor the augmented maximum) and if you raise your agility you need to pay karma according to your current raiting (so this "augmentation" counts)
And with the genetic optimization, metamagic advantages or the adept powers and so on, there are several different boni all following different rules.
(Same thing with skills)
But nowhere the rules for different modifiers are but down. Actually there are not even mentioned.

(Than there are a lot of modifiers which exculde different modifiers and so on.)

To put it plain and simple: SR seems to embrace the idea of different modifiers like DnD but it does not give it a central remark, instead it is always mentioned "on the fly". This leaves everybody to wonder, how stuff react with it if this stuff is from later sourcebooks.

Hehe, I forgot! We recently had that thread about how you can't 'stack' Muscle Augs; why get Muscle Toner 4 when you can get 4 Toner 1's?

That, at least to me, makes sense to not stack. You have one set of muscles to tone, not 4. On the other hand, there's plenty of space for an arbitrary number of force screens.

Sure. I'm just saying, people will try anything. For stacking Armor spells, you really do just have to pick.

@crazymykl
Where is the differance?

upping rating of bioware was allways adding, not replacing with higher rating.
only grade change needed to be changed out completely.

@Stahlseele
Alright, thats news to me..

If you have Attitude on pg 160 in the sidebar you can find modifications that can be added to regular or armored clothing.

I'd need to see the rule, unless 'was' means previous editions. We just went over this at length for SR4 and it seems pretty clear. However, that's not the point. Upgrading a given implant from Rating 1 to Rating 2 is not the same as getting Rating 1, and then getting another Rating 1 (for the functionality of Rating 2). The first is 'upgrading', the second is 'stacking'. Certain implants have directly linear costs, so they come out functionally similar to stacking, but they're not.