Hi everyone!

Recently I've encountered a rather .... silly problem I have with my mage.
We play ghost cartels campaign and the enemies get stronger and stronger but my mage somehow lacks the firing power.

as info: I got 6 Essence, 6 Magic Points and 10 Drain

Now my problem is that everytime I cast I need to overcast to keep up with the bad guys. Most of the time I eat as much damage as the enemys because of drain but I'm fine with that. Now we adopted the (english rulebook) optional rule that manabolt gains additional drain with every nethit, this is a big hindrance for me. Now I've "reskilled" to lightning bolt, Fireball, Flamethrower and stuff like that but the drain is just silly on those things ..
I've calculated that if I cast Lightning bolt (F/2 +3) on Force 8 (4+3 = 7 Drain) it would cost just as much as casting levitate Force 12 (F/2 +1 = 7 Drain) and that I would do much more damage with the levitation spell than I ever could with a lower Lightning Bolt.

With a force 12 Levitation spell i can lift 2.5 tons of wheight. The speed is calculated with Force x Nethits meters per turn
Force 12 with 12 hits would be 144m/3s or 48m/s. This would be 172 km/h. Since the speed is high enough to be similar to a traffic accident you could use the rules for running someone over with a car. Since the Speed is between 61-200 meters per turn the "victim" would suffer the cars body x2 in damage. Typical cars have a body of 8 or 10 that would mean 16P or 20P damage that most likely can't be evaded and every combat phase after the first you just can smack him again since you can hold on to the Force 12 levitation spell with only a -2 modifier.

Is there something wrong with my thinking or are elemental spells inferior to levitation as a combat spell ?

Edit: Just that you know my mage needs to keep up with a sniper maniac that uses the biggest sniper rifle with apds shells. most of the time he does 18P damage with -8 armor ... that's why the enemies use a lot of edge and my mage is in this unfortunate situation

First off, with your Levitate example, you need net hits for speed, so it wouldn't really work out as well as you think all the time. Using the Ramming rules on Levitate would be a GM's House-Rule (and not a bad one, by the way), so don't count on simply the rules to allow you to do so.

Have you thought of just getting a gun? The Optional Rule that your GM has chosen seems specifically designed to screw mages and encourage Overcasting and Multicasting. There's a recent thread about changes to spell drain that you may want to read over with your GM that has a number of other ideas about trying to balance the disproportion between Direct and Indirect Combat spells. Levitate would only be "superior" to Indirect Combat spells if your proposed House-Rule were inacted (alternately you could Levitate the target straight up and drop them - falling damage is completely RAW) and Levitate doesn't have the secondary effects of elemental spells, which is what makes them attractive in the first place.

Alternate combat options are Crowd-Control magic (Control Thoughts, ect.) or defensive magic (Physical Wall, Shape [Element], ect.). Alternatively you can pick up the Increase [Attribute] spells for your drain stats to help out with your Drain Resistance Tests, making both Indirect and Direct spells easier to reliably cast.

EDIT:
Ahh, here's your problem. The point of the game is not a competition between players to deal the most damage you can, the point of the game is to survive while completing your missions. With this mindset you and your group are going to end up dead unless your GM is specifically running a more "hack and slash" version of SR.

I get your point about the nethits. But still elemental spells feel very very weak in the ghost cartels campaign since almost any swat team has either fire or electric protection added to their armor and make the bonus of 1/2 armor from elemental damage useless.

Lifting someone with levitation is rather difficult since he's an "unwilling" subject. You need to win a Force x2 opposed test against the enemys strenght+body. But with a force 12 levitation spell I probably could even throw around trolls

I rather despise using things like "mind control". I know it would be an easy and effective way to kill people by forcing them to pull all the pins of their grenades but I see my mage more as a "force of nature" that hits with spells and manipulation than with mental spells. If I ever need to redo a mage I could think about that and create the right char concept (for example a mentalist or psychic).

The problem I have with guns is, that my mage has agility 3 and no skill in guns. That just leads to a heavy karma drain I could use otherwise for better stuff. I rather would choose an option where I could raise my magic attribute or something like that to keep up with the team

I know that it isn't a competition and I don't want to be the "top damage dealer" of my party. But because the other players are hitting so damn hard, the GM needs do adjust the enemies or else it becomes a cake walk for our group. And because of that my mage is very very weak and if he gets shot, he almost dies in 1-2 shots. While scaling the enemies made it more challenging for the other players, it made running in the shadows a living hell for my mage

You are using Levitate wrong.
Levitate enemies up high and simply drop them.
Or levitate something in front of them to stop them from attacking.
Or levitate something in front of you to stop them from attacking.

Use the Blast element instead. -1/2 Impact armor and the Force of the spell is added to the damage dealt to determine Knockdown, which means even if you deal no damage chances are you knock down the enemy anyways.

Why don't you use Manabolt or Stunball ?
Drain is much lower and its harder for the Enemies to resist( no 1/2 Impact Armor) and its more effective on Spirits....
or (maybe even better)
Why do you have to deal with the enemies at all ?
You've got Streetsam Chummers that can deal out lots of damage,so why don't You instead use Buff Spells, or Intelligence (as in Military Intelligence) Spells like Clairvoyance,or Protection Spells, or Healing spells,or Illusion Spells,or,or,or.....
You don't need to compete with the Streetsams !

with a better Dance
Medicineman

I don't use manabolt since we use the optional rules for direct mental combat spells. Casting a force 8 manbolt has normaly 4 (F/2) Drain but with the optional rules (mandatory in the german rulebook we use) The manabolt gets 4 (F/2) Drain +1 Drain for every nethit you use to raise damage. So I can easily eat up to 12 Drain just for a Force 8 manabolt with 8 nethits ....

Looks like I should reskill to support magic, but my mage is specialized into combat magic by Mentor spirit and Spellcasting specialization.

Beat me to it Medi.... If you have a sniper dealing that kind of dmg, and comparable from the other team members, make yourself usefull in other ways.
Like use Levitate to quickly and easily get your sniper into a better shooting positions.
Or throw up a barrier at a corner so when the enemy pops out to shoot you he is firing point blank into a "brick" wall.
Use Levitate on explosives, or take their guns away from them, etc etc etc.
I for one am a fan of the "utility" mage in SR, as opposed to the "D&D" mage.

Aha...well, in that case...how about this?

Just because the guy you are shooting your spells at has elemental protections, that doesnt mean his surroundings do. Blow the floor out from under him, start the building he is in on fire, etc. And remember, Electricity is nasty nasty nasty, even if you only get 1 point of dmg.


(edit: i must let it be known that I am generally discouraged from playing the mage in a campaign, at least until others have had a chance to try it out. My gm’s don’t want to know what fun new thing I will come up with to do with the spells that exist….anyone ever heard of a game called BloodDawn?)

The manabolt gets 4 (F/2) Drain +1 Drain for every nethit you use to raise damage. So I can easily eat up to 12 Drain just for a Force 8 manabolt with 8 nethits ....
Then use a Force 9 Manabolt with only 2 Nethits (discard the unnessecary Hits) which deals 11 Damage
for a Drain of 6
or a Force 11 Manabolt with only 1 nethit
Damage 12 and Drain 6

Hough!
Medicineman

Another question I've got is:
I learned the spell "demolish assault rifles" but the rules how to handle that test are rather unclear to me.
First you need to beat the object resistance (core book p183) and after that you try to get past the armor and structure rating of an object (core book p166).

But neither in the object resistance table nor in the structure table it is defined what kind of "material" a gun is and how much resistance it got
I've read it 3x now and I'm still confused -_-

Teach the folly of using that rule by doing what the rule encourages--always overcasting at double your Magic and not using any hits toward damage.

Yeah but it states that you need AT LEAST 1 net hit for the manabolt so that it can deliver it's damage.
For example I would cast a Force 12 manabolt with only 1 hit to do 13P damage and the enemy uses willpower to resist and only has 1 hit for resisting. Wouldn't that mean that the spell "fizzles" since it's 1 hit against 1 hit and thus I scored no nethit?

But you don't have to apply that net hit toward damage. You can choose to only deal the base damage with the spell, and this bypasses that bogus rule (which was rightly altered to be entirely optional here in the States).

As far as I read the rules you can't just say i want to use 8 hits but none of them to raise the damage. Every hit you add automaticly raises the DV of the spell.
For example a Force 12 manabolt with 6 nethits, the enemy roles 3 dices for defense and now you got 6 Drain +3 Drain from the nethits you scored and thus 9 Drain.
But if you only use 1 Hit to the spell and the other person scores 1 hit too, the spell fails since you didn't score any nethits.

This optional rule is really limiting mages -_-

EDIT: In the 20th Anniversary edition that rule is mandatory in the english book and not only in the german book :/

In the early PDFs, yes, but once you get into print versions which came later, you find the true way which is optional (The Anniversary was probably out a year or a little more before I snagged a dead-tree copy, and the one I got shows the actual way).

And yes, that rule is serious bulldrek.

Effect comes after successful targeting. You can have 8 net hits, and hit, then choose to not apply any to damage. So damage is Base Force.

And you should really read through your English book again. It is OPTIONAL in ALL 3 Hard-Copies I have, including the Precious, as well as in the PDF.

Basically, all the optional rule does (as I mentioned before) is make it better to maximum-overcast for a bit of P drain that you can resist rather than "hold back" at Magic rating or less and use net hits for damage. Basically it penalizes the caster for being good at casting.

Indeed... which is why it is a poor optional rule.

First it depends on the force of the spell. If you cast the spell at force 8 and you have 10 net hits you can only use 8 of them max (because of the force of the spell)

Second,


I would highly recommend using the powerball/manaball/stunball as you can hit more than one target, mana is resisted with Will which most grunts are low on, physical spells are resisted with body which most mages are low on. There is no armor added to it, just the straight stat and for the most part they are throwing between 3-5 dice only giving them 1 - 2 hits. On your example of force 8 stunbolt with no net hits applied you are looking at 8 boxes of physical or stun damage (and for the "bad guys" they only have one condition monitor, so your 8 boxes of damage equals -2 on all their rolls except damage resistance). My son is a big fan of theses spells as well as the utility spells. If I were to add the optional rule to my game, he would just overcast everything at force 12 and then deal with the 6 drain (which he has set up to resist quite well) and not add any additional hits to the damage code.

Yup. Elemental spells are for destroying nonliving, high-OR objects and for AEing people you can't see. You want to use Stunball at force 11, and just drop any extra hits.

Buy yourself a detonater, and a few kilos of plastic explosive. Levitate the explosive into position, remote detonate it. Voila! Targeted demolitions nbetter than any grenade launcher.

Grenades in SR4 work like this too. No specialized Equipment needed at all.

I think they're suggesting the Demolitions explosives as an attempt to try and get around the scatter rules.

I think the OP is missing the definition of Net hits, that is the hits you have after the target resists. If he casts his direct combat spell and gets 8 hits and the target resists with 3 hits, he now has 5 net hits, of which he can apply all or none or some to the final damage. Assuming a force 12 stunbolt as an example, his base damage is 12 and he could add 1 net hit for a 13 damage and a drain of 6 (f/2 -1 +1 for net hit).
With the optional rule, there is no reason to apply all his net hits to the spell if it was overcast and he has done more than about 10-12 damage. As has been said, this option really encourages overcasting but the drain shouldn't be as bad as he makes it.
Remember, Net Hits is what you get after the resistance test, not before. Just like take home pay is net pay, not what you get before taxes.

Hey Umaro, mabye I am just blinded, but where is the distincion about hitting targets you cant see with an AOE direct vs AOE indirect. I've seen talk about it but havent been able to find it. Please and thanks boss!

AOE Indirect can hit people you can't see.
AOE Direct can't hit people you can't see.

Or use Sound Ball, in conjunction with lightning ball and fireball, since it's an elemental spell try something bizarre like Sand Ball, Water Ball, Light Ball, Ice Ball, etc.

Not sure that all Elemental Effects can be resisted by gear

Blast Ball also sounds good.

aye, i get that, lookin for pages n books

i can't tell you the page number, but the rationale is easy:
stunball and manaball and the such produce an entirely magical effect, which needs LOS to the target.
while fireball and the such create magically a completely mundane effect. you only need LOS to the POI like with a grenade.
thy are, basically, magical grenades. in exchange, people get to resist with the usually higher body attrbute and take armor to help them and dodge.

cool cool. I am just going to have to keep digging, one of my players is trying to fight back against that one, and he is the "rules lawyer" hehe. Thanks for the info


edit: but in that respect, how much does it take to block your LOS? and what can? an example obviously would be a mirrored window, you cant see through it. But what about that full military armor stuff with the helmet etc. its basically hermetically sealed so you cant really "see" them.

and for the record...i KNOW he is going to bring up something like this so just pre-empting

Armor does not help.
Barriers help. That's the easiest thing about it.
Your "Aura" Extends several cm from your body.
So it's above the armor. So the mystical connection can be made.
And wearing armor, you still look humanoid enough.
When you are behind a Wall, there is nothing there even telling you that there is something human there . .

Excellent, Thank you.

Sorry for Hijacking your Thread OP!

and now, back to your regularly scheduled program!

Thanks for all the help and clarification about the rules.

I believe you, that you have a book where it is optional. But maybe I've just got the Europe UK PDF version where it's mandatory to use that stupid rule. I've double checked it and there isn't anything "optional" about that rule in my english PDF

Well it seems as if I misread the whole "nethit" stuff. If it works like you guys described it with chosing to add DV AFTER the resistance test, my mage is just right back in business I really missed using manabolt but with this optional rule it's killing my mage faster with drain than a minigun could in full auto hehe

And if my GM is still being a "dick" about this rule I guess I'll just learn the spell tsunami and after everything is wet I lightning bolt the water on the ground for AOE knockout

EDIT:

Just got another creative Idea!
Cast a Sand Ball, after that a Fireball and then use Chaos or Poltergeist to see glass shards swirling around the room (doable in 1 combat turn if you have improved initiative spell force 4 )

Creative usage of Magic is the one most horrible thing about Magic.
Good to see you are well on your way to Dumpshock Standards ^^

Another question I've got is:
I learned the spell "demolish assault rifles" but the rules how to handle that test are rather unclear to me.
First you need to beat the object resistance (core book p183) and after that you try to get past the armor and structure rating of an object (core book p166).

But neither in the object resistance table nor in the structure table it is defined what kind of "material" a gun is and how much resistance it got sarcastic.gif
I've read it 3x now and I'm still confused -_-

Could someone please explain that stuff to me ?

Okay, just one more quick Q here. What book are the optional element rules in? like sound, light, sand, etc?

It's the same OR as a Drone basically.
And that's the beauty of it.
If you overcome the OR with at least as much net hits as the OR is high, then you simply destryo it in one go.


Street Magic, or maybe Digital Grimoire. Probably the latter.
It was included in the German Street Magic, so we can get it mixed up from time to time.

Street Magic

Are you sure? Because if it works as easy as that ... a lot of bad guys need to get better at fist fighting or use their guns as clubs

Pretty sure it does. Not completely though.
Anything else would make these spells mostly useless though . .
And remember: if you take the area effect version of the spell, it affects ALL AR's in LOS.
So friendly fire too.

All AR's that are in LOS and VISIBLE... It is a Direct Spell after all...

Also, The Spells would work like Wreck Vehicle does. They cause actual damage. Base Physical Boxes for a weapon (There is no Body stat after all) would be 8. It they are particulalrly fragile, you could reduce it by up to 3 (Fragile is a Drawback, with 3 levels, -1 Box per Level, IIRC). Weapon suffers penalties dependant upon how damaged it is (like Vehicles do)...

That help?

Why not demolish guns? This is even an example in the book ^^

Indeed... Demolish Assault Rifle is a restricted Spell, so Demolish Guns has a higher drain than Demolish Assault Rifles would.

Well, demolish XY is already a restricted version of powerball, so demolish assault rifles would be a very restricted target.

Regarding the net hits:

(directly from the SR4A PDF - you should update your download)

Even if this rule is enforced: maximum overcast at uneven force numbers (force 9 or 11 for example) => you roll your spellcasting hits => the enemy rolls his spell resistance hits => AFTER that you have your potential NET hits (your hits - resistance hits = net hits). Since most enemies have only 10 boxes of damage and since you need only 1 net hit to deliver a spell, your spell does 10 to 12 damage and +1 to the drain roll. Wich, in the case of a Stunbolt at force 11, would be a 11+1 damage and 4.5 +1 drain, enough to drop a willpower 8 enemy. 5 drain is indeed a little problematic, but with a clever combination of good drain stats, edge, centering metamagic and/or trauma damper / platelet factories it becomes manageable.

SYL

Vykos: SR4A 204 last sentence of the last paragraph under "Indirect Combat Spells."

A couple of my favorite spells for combat are bind, levitate, and glue. I like to glue bad guys to the ceiling, or ground if necessary. I call it my Sonic Transducer.

After going over the books I found a solution to buff my mage for the rest of the campaign!

First I need to get 2 Sustaining Focus Force 5 and bind them (2x 10 Karma = 20 Karma, very doable. Money isn't an issue in ghost cartels campaign )

After that I learn the spells Increased Attribute Willpower and Charisma. Boosting both of my Drainstats to 10 with the sustaining focuses and thus giving me a total of 20 Drain dices to resist spells. Only for the total cost of 30 Karma and about 150'000 Nuyen

Even with the silly "direct combat additional drain" rule I can throw around my manabolts all day long

PS: My mage got will to live and has a total of 19 boxes until he's dead (box 20 would be fatal). Giving me enough room for overcasting to the max