So I'm just going to point to the most obvious one, but there are a bunch of these in the gear chapter. SR2050 1) is awesome and 2) includes many rules for things we've seen before. Some of them, like the Ares MP Laser, are clearly changed because of the timeline. But take a look at the Armor chart: They're got our old friend FFBA! And it's significantly powered down. This is, unlike the MP, with no mention of it being new, or experimental, or uncommon.

Is this meant to replace the FFBA rules in Arsenal, or is this only for 2050 games?

There are other cases across the board--I might have missed it in the other books, but Concealability mods for weapon mods are new to me (though very welcome)--but this is the one that struck me most.

Bug Spirits show up in the introductory chapter as well, which was surprising. I guess the book is more of an era book than a specific point in time book, which is just fine with me.

I don't know on the FFBA entry in there, but I think I'm going to rule ignoring the armor value for it in there and just use the Arsenal version for my games.

We had a rage of stuff we could get from the era, but wanted the feel of SR1 for a lot of things.

It's fine, though I think there should have been a couple of shadowtalk entries. Including one calling the poster a lunatic and delusional.

That was the idea. You'll notice that some of the dates, where they're mentioned, go to sometime in 2051, IIRC. Maybe 2052. It was more important to get the feel of the era than to just focus on the year in the title. Some of it I didn't quite agree with, but it wasn't worth fighting on those few points when I considered how much I loved the rest of the book.

Which is a perfectly valid reaction, to my mind.

I don't know about anyone else, but the changes to magic in this book (with the possible exception of grounding, but that remains to be seen) will become pretty standard at my table for any era, not just this one. If I ever get a table together again, that is....

Well, now that I've seen Grounding (started in Third, and it was already gone), I kind of like it, so I'll be using that in all eras--ignoring the explanation for why it went away.

I don't know if you care about power or not, but I recommending changing Wuxing. It gets normal SR4A summoning which is much better than just having binding or having to worry about domains. I'll weaken it a bit. My suggestion is that they can only summon when they are near a large natural source of the element. For example, you need a larger than lighter fire for Fire spirits or be in forest for plant spirits. For guidance spirits, I'll have it in a lodge and/or the use of three fetishes. This most closely fits the requirements of Wuxing mages had for summoning back in the SR3 days where they had elemental domains and special rules for summoning ancestor spirits.

I do like the new FFBA since it becomes a very useful stackable armor option and not the must have it is normally. I also like the more sensible ware initiative stacking in SR50. For most, only IPs don't stack. I already would houseruled that way in my games, but it'll be nice for it to work explicitly in Missions (how I normally play SR).

As for the gear, it's a mashup of stuff from SR1, The Street Samurai Catalog, and Shadowtech. SR1 and the catalog cover 2050. Shadowtech takes place in 2052.

Very useful my hindquarters, it just looks to me like an overcompensation from listening to people whining the buzz-words "power creep" and "armor inflation" over and over again.

All4BigGuns... wait til an astral mage orders a force 1 spirit to materialize in front of you on it's next action... then has an action readied to cast a powerball obliterating you and all your other friends (or fireball also works, the spell needed to be physical and area in past editions... any mana spell would only be single target and affect the grounding target only under old editions).


That is a prime reason why grounding was removed. It led to a lot of magical abuse and mundanes could do absolutely nothing to stop an astral target from ganking them at will or counter-attack him back. (this is similar to why I really dislike possession as written up... it allows a purely astral form to attack things til it gets a physical body then causes it to 'switch sides' with no ability for them to fight back until it succeeds.


I count grounding as one of the worst mechanics ever put in the game and I play a lot of magical types... it did a lot to give mages a bad name as overpowered.


The bits about IP's and such... don't see an issue... As I read through it it's pretty clear they're basing it on SR1 and SR2. I recognized a lot of the old bits and pieces just formed into the SR4 dice/attribute/damage system.

I'm mostly worried about dikote making a comeback now... I absolutely hated dikote... everything and anything ended up dikoted just because it became better. (and extremely silly) How long til we see dikoted arrows, mono-swords.. etc... showing up in 2070's games.

Oh, I will be using the Dikote in the games that I run as well.

I hate dikote with a passion, too.
Dikoted car bumpers, yay.

At my table, Dikote became the industry standard, kinda like Teflon, and when the patent expired everybody started using it. As a result, there's nothing special about it, so no bonuses.

In Universal Brotherhood p122 there's a transcript of a discussion of Insect Spirits dated April 30, 2051, and there's another transcript with sightings a few pages earlier from April 28, 2050. Might be able to push the first known sighting date back even further with a more careful perusal.

~J

As a GM, you let a mage get away with that once or twice, and the spirits become very, very hostile when he summons them up. Or, simply rule that astral objects attuned to the caster don't work for grounding due to the syncing of the astral signatures or some other mumbo jumbo.

Someone who thinks power creep and armor inflation are 'buzz words' might be difficult to argue with.

Grounding coming back? How many times does evil have to be defeated?

Now you're making up arbitrary house rules Bigity. Yes, there are RP consequences... but someone who builds their character to exploit these mechanics won't have much trouble.

I did see this kind of nonsense happen more than once. Grounding was one of the worst and most abusive mechanics in the game. Because it broke the astral/physical barrier (what happens on the astral stays on the astral and vice versa). As such it allowed a mage to attack mundanes with IMPUNITY. That's not a good situation for game balance.

In the last case, it was a hermetic who limited his blasting to a single type of spirit of very low force. That's as much as I recall it was a very long time ago. So in SR4 terms... what happens he gets a spirit bane (if he didn't start with it already)... the low force spirit spends edge to resist binding... scary that one....


I simply believe that players should have some way to defend themselves, run away, or counter-attack even if they're not magical. Grounding offered none of these... mundanes couldn't defend against magic. They couldn't attack a purely astral mage. They couldn't run away from an astral mage who can move through things at astral speeds and keep up.

But the first option isn't a house rule. The fluff already discusses the consequences of abusing spirits. It's the same for the guy who abuses cops, or a mob family. No rules for it, he just makes himself a target with a certain group and you as a GM run with it.

I guess if you have guys being twinks you are gonna have problems. I tend to deal with that kind of thing across the table, outside of the game.

Pure mundanes have nothing to fear from grounding. Now if they choose to stand by a magician with an active focus, then there is a problem. I don't think a guy abusing the fluff of the game to summon spirits as throw away bombs is a good argument against grounding, IMO.

It's an argument against a guy who isn't RPing a magician, or at least a shaman.

Grounding is also an excellent check against magicians running around with 6+ spell locks.

No it's not out of RP... remember hermetics view spirits as tools.

And yes mundanes do have a lot to fear from grounding. Grounding doesn't only target the mage... it targets everyone AROUND the mage. Or more importantly, everyone around ground zero when the mage decides to attack them with IMPUNITY.

And yes the fluff of abusing spirits is there... but it's nowhere near as bad as you make it out to be. Spirits of that type will preferentially target you over others as their orders allow. Spirits of that type will be harder to bind (spending edge against your binding attempts). It's not like the spirit mafia is going to put a contract out on you. You're a target of oppurtunity... worse you're a mage who can nuke them pretty much at will if they do show themselves.

Sure, but how many crafters run around wasting or damaging tools on purpose?

And how many folks are going to be standing by a magician with an active focus who has someone gunning for him with enough mad on, who is also a magician who can ground a spell into pedestrians? Shadowrun isn't a rock, paper, scissors game. Some techniques are just nasty. It's a dark, mean, nasty world. At least in the 2050 era. You are taking what is, at least in my mind, a pretty twisted situation and calling it overpowered. It's not all that different from someone using Edge to amp up an Invisibility spell and shooting the same mundane in the face, which they also pretty much have no chance to resist. Someone with wires is going to destroy a mundane, just as a grounding situation would - although, I haven't read all of 2050 yet so I don't know if initiative works the same as pre-SR3.

And, spirits using Edge and such is only the STARTING point, and it gets worse. At least, IMO.

Depends if those tools are disposable and basically free.

Do we want to play a world where you have to stand far away from mages in case they explode? We could also just… not. What's the reason *for* having grounding?

It was a while ago...but I really don't remember grounding being so overpowering. Mostly it taught you not to ride with the mage and to be OCD about your foci.

Really, grounding through foci wasn't a problem. The issue is grounding through spirits...but I'm not convinced its actually worse than the ability to just sit in astral space, Summon a spirit, tell it to kick everyone's ass, and if it loses you summon another. Either way, opponents who can't do anything to astral forms are screwed.

They weren't free in SR2 when you had grounding. And they also took Hours x Force to summon.

So are we talking about bring *that* setup back, too? Cuz I'd be fine with that. Still not with grounding, but nothing wrong with limiting spirits more.

It wasn't only grounding through spirits.

You could ground through anything dual-natured which included spells back in SR2 IIRC. That includes the astrally percieving adept/mage even if he doesn't have foci.

Or dual-natured paracritters, perhaps lobbed in a box at enemies.





-k

HA! That'll give the non-mages something to do, then.

Doesn't SR2050 do this? Some comments made me think it does, though I have not read it yet.

So some kind of mental domination on the devil rats to get em close.... then *BOOM*.

HAHAHAHA

You couldn't ground through spells, even sustained spells. Astral perception, dual nature (including materialized spirits), and active foci.

Or feed some bum some of that awakened drug that forces you to astrally perceive, even if not a magician.

I don't see why that works, anyway. At least dual-natured things are actually bridging the gap; perception is just looking through the glass.

No perception *IS* dual-natured. The rules make that clear someone who is astrally percieving is present on both planes and can be targetted accordingly. That's been true in all the versions I can think of.

At the risk of starting a huge fire, what's the difference between grounding a physical spell vs. just bolting them with mana spells from the astral? Aren't physical spells easier to resist to being with?

How hard is grounding? More drain / less dice?

It used to make using Foci hard for mages and forbidden for adepts, enemy materialised spirits removeable by a projected mage, and then there was the spirit bomb issue. The "dual-natured paracritter" idea is great, too.

Falconer, I'm just talking about a hypothetical distinction, not how things actually are. Perception is indeed dual-nature in the rules, I should've been clearer.

Neko, you can't cast on anything (or affect it at all) from the astral unless it's dual-natured. Grounding sort of changes that.

Well, you can *always* attack spirits from the astral, Ryu. They're dual-natured.

My fault, you are correct. What was I thinking?

Huh. Based on the rules (as I initially read them) for Astral Combat, I assumed that you could attack people in the physical realm while on the astral (SR4A, pg 193) and then based on the spell rules you could only use Mana spells in the Astral; which meant that only Mana spells could be used to cross that barrier. I'm assuming then that the relevant text for Astral Combat is actually talking about attacking dual-natured beings too?

That's correct Neko. Only dual-natured and astral things can be attacked from the astral.

Grognards: did SR3- allow you to ground through active spells? Or only through dual-natured beings and foci?

Yep, Neko. That's why grounding bothers people: the astral/physical divide is otherwise inviolable (in principle), and some of think it should always stay that way.

Grounding was a casualty of the SR2->SR3 conversion, so you couldn't ground through anything in SR3. In SR1 "A magician in Astral Space cannot cast a spell at another spell[…]" (p91). I don't have a copy of SR2 handy to check it.

~J

Gotcha. Honestly, though, we've been playing it wrong in my group, I think I'm gonna keep doing it. I'm not gonna allow grounding, that IS too good, but my group lacks a real infiltrator, so our mage does double duty and the mana spells and astral combat have allowed her to be relevant to combat where she is really too fragile to handle face to face action (due to her build, not my GMing). And thanks for clearing that up!

It's good to hear that hasn't been abused yet, but it's hard to imagine anything more powerful than allowing a projecting mage to attack people on the physical with astral combat and mana spells. That's far *beyond* grounding.

It sounds scary, but it's no more troublesome in my games than a good infiltrator sneaking up and Narcojetting a guard. ^_^

Sure, assuming it's literally impossible for the guard to see or hear that guy, his attacks ignore armor, and he can *fly* through walls. Like I said, I'm glad to hear it hasn't been a problem in your game.

In SR2, it's foci and active astral perception (SR2 149) as well.

Was it re-added in Magic in the Shadows of SR3? My roommate seems to remember something like grounding. Then again, I think his older core book is SR2, so he might be thinking of that. Figured both are possibilities, so I thought I'd ask.

With the price it has, i kinda think if some one is willing to increase the price of their katana by 6 times they have kinda earned the +1 to damage and -2 AP, especially since melee with weapons is severely UP compared to unarmed adepts.
The possible extra armor isn't even worth talking about, +3 to armor for 150k-300k+ isn't really worth it ever, especially as there's no rule about it not counting for encumbrance so only a "Body to the max" Troll can really get any use out of it(and for him the price is likely to be in the 300k+ range)