Hello everyone! I'm a long time lurker but I just registered today.

Recently I started a new Shadowrun campaign after something like 10years from the last one! I used to GM 2nd edition and I decided to upgrade to 3ed. There are somethings that I'm not sure about and I'm looking for advices in this forum.


Foci

Do Foci leave an astral "opening" that make the character vulnerable to attacks from the Astral Plane like they did in 2nd edition? (In second edition an active focus was targetable by any spell from the astral plane, so an area effect combat spell would have hitted the wielder)

Spell sustained by Sustaining Focus are dispellable?

Anchored spells are dispellable?

(I know that quickened spells are)

Spirits/Elementals

Do bows still do full damage to elementals and/or materialized spirits?




Thanks for the answers!

Grounding spells does not exist in SR3.

However, active spell foci can be attacked through astral space, breaking the karmic bond between them and the owner (if not destroying them). Due to grounding being removed, no spells can pass between the different planes even when breaking a foci in this way.

Yes, with the same rules/procedure as a regularly sustained spell.

IIRC it can be attacked astrally if the anchor is active, but the spell cannot be dispelled until it is active.

It is a normal weapon, so the Immunity power applies to it.

No grounding in SR3. period.

All spells are dispell-able.

All spirits get the Immunity to normal weapons power from materialization normally save that dont get that power. So bow do the same damage as firearms under RAW but high str can really level the playing field.

Hope this helps

Ninj' ed

Any particular reason?

I admit, I started with SR1 and played that way for a long while. (I still know how staging works.) Grounding didn't seem any more objectionable than any other rule. Considering you have to be casting on the Astral, and all drain is Physical...

So why remove it? I'm not complaining, I'm just curious. (And I've read the sidebar in Shadowrun 2050.)

First, thanks to everyone for the quick answers! 2nd edition and 3d edition are so similar that I'm getting often confused on what rules really changed.

I have another question: if there's no grounding in Shadowrun 3d, this means that a mage could even leave all his foci always active without facing any consequences?

So playerA could even go to sleep with active foci?

The focus is still dual natured while active and can be attacked astrally.


I've never in any edition of the game ever seen grounding used to screw the mage. It's a great thing that it's now gone and on the ash heap of game history.

I've only ever seen it used by mages to screw mundanes. (Example: one kept a stable of low force spirits bound... their entire mission in life was to suicide bomb... he'd order it to materialize in a room at which point he cast his ready'd indirect area elemental spell. Nobody in the room could do anything to the mage since he was safe and sound on the astral and they were boned. Remember, direct mana spells only attacked a single target... even if they were area spells.

Thanks Falconer.

So basically as sustaining focus don't "hold" inactive spells like they did in 2nd edition, this means a mage can't really have "activable easy buffs" in 3d edition anymore.


So I guess sustaining Focus only purpose is to avoid the +2 malus for sustaining spells.

Quite a hit in power level to the mages from 2nd to 3d editions! (Even Archetipes in 2nd edition had some active spell buffs on a focus)

Yeah every edition since 1st has trimmed the power of mages.

SR2 had 'spell locks'. SR3 replaced them with sustaining foci. I don't recall the exact details it's been ages since I played either 2nd or 3rd. Glancing at my old book though when binding the focus, you had to pick one spell and only one spell that focus could sustain in SR3. In SR4 they simplified it to be any spell of the right type when cast.



Which kind of makes sense for the setting... when magic is completely new and unexpected... it's a lot more powerful and surprising. As people learn to adapt to it and it becomes less strange and new... Most of the initial disruptions in the story deal with that whole arc, magic changes everything... the powers that be rearrange themselves or die out.

Grounding didn't exist in SR1 either. Just FYI. It was only a SR2 thing.

I think Grounding is in the first edition Grimoire.

Yes. It meant that an astrally projecting mage was neigh unstoppable. Walk up, hit the enemy mage with a grounded Fireball, kill the whole group.

Don't think so but my copy of that particular book is long gone.

As noted, active foci are subject to attack and possible destruction. Additionally, Focus Addiction (MitS, p46) limits the total Force of foci a mage can have simultaneously active without risking magic loss. The test is per Combat Turn, so a mage who for some inexplicable reason goes to sleep with too many active foci is almost certain to wake up mundane.

~J

I dug out my first ed Grimoire, Grounding is on p68 in the Astral chapter.

You can not also take an active focus through a ward. In extreme cases without the focus deactivating, breaking or letting the ward owner know in either case.

Thanks for all the replies.

Basically Awakaned "permanent-activable" buffs are a thing of the past! The two mages in my playing group won't be very happy tomorrow night! I dunno if I should house rule it for this campaign in order to not piss the mage player that were use to playing like this in 2nd edition. (I'm sure one of the two players won't complain, but the other one is a different story)

I recommend against it, but I would suggest giving them an opportunity to rebuild their characters (since they probably built them under the assumption that such things were possible).

~J

I will follow your advice Shadow Angel.


BTW as the group is going to face a Vampire tomorrow, I'm reading the essence drain power in the critters manual. It doesn't say how it works (it only says how it works when the Vampire tries to drain essence from a creature with the same power). It also looks like it's not an action you could normally do in combat, but as I read, the Vampire could cast a domination spell and force the victim to be drain. Do you know how much essence the Vampire could drain per turn? And how the test is made eventually? Thanks for the advice.

The power description is on p10 of Critters; it looks like it answers your questions.

Edit: well, ok, the drain time is the vague "some minutes", but I don't think a more specific answer exists.

(Since it's impossible to regain Essence, it would be pretty harsh if it were possible to do in combat.)

~J

So no rolls involved. The critter can drain as much drain as he has in few minutes undisturbed. In other words it's not something you can use during a combat.

I have another 3ed question regarding mages:

Magician's Way - Magic in the Shadow, page 22 and 24.

Page 24: "If a magician adept Initiates, she can choose to either gain an extra Power Point or learn a metamagical technique. Magician adepts are capable of learning any of the methamagical techniques."


This means that when Magicians Adepts initiates they don't gain Magic naturally, they have to choose to either get 1 power point (and maybe get 1magic point with the "Magical Power" power, OR gain a methamagical ability.

I am right?


And... aren't those guys a bit too strong?

Firstly your right on how it works.

They tend to suffer from having their eggs in to many baskets and get out competed by straight adepts and magicians in their particular niche. But they do cover more bases in a small group.

They also make very good anti conjurer and spell caster characters.

No, you are right.
And they are huge karma-sinks.

Almost. They always get a point of Magic; what I think you're driving at, and this may just be a wording issue rather than a misunderstanding, is that they have a distinct secondary "effective magic rating" equal to the number of levels of Magical Power they have that's used where Magic would be for all non-Adepty magical things—this is what might or might not get raised based on whether they take the Power Point and spend it on Magical Power.


Not really. They never get access to Astral Projection (well, except for the weird corner case with Dual-Natured species (is that the right term here?) like Ghouls and Shapeshifters), which is horribly painful by itself, but on top of that don't even get Astral Perception for free—they need to spend two Power Points on it!

Now, one thing that makes up for this is the fact that there are a bunch of "utility spells" that are highly valuable at Force 1 (and that number can grow depending on GM interpretation of some corner cases, like whether Improved Invisibility runs up against Object Resistance or not); still, because magic loss always hits Magical Power first, and if Magical Power ever hits 0 it's gone for good, you'd need to be pretty accepting of risk to take fewer than two levels of Magical Power (a kindly GM would probably treat a Magician's Way Adept who lost his Magical Power like any other Adept, but a strict treatment of the rules means that character is doubly screwed—they can never get their powers back, but still need to choose between a Power Point and a metamagical technique instead of getting both like normal Adepts.

~J

Oh they can have astral projection.
but only for magic minutes, not for magic hours.

MitS, p24: "Magician adepts begin without access to astral space. They may purchase and use the power of astral perception normally but can never use astral projection."

Actually, that might even override the usual Dual-Natured Critter+Magical Skills=able to project rule, hard to say.

~J

It's an advanced meta tech for them.
You can initiate and learn to do it then.

There is a metamagic in the SOTA64 book that gives Astral Projection to those who only have Astral Perception. As Stahlseele said, it's for (Magic) minutes.

To get it though, you have to have only Astral Perception access to the Astral.

Y'know, as soon as I saw Stahlseele's second post about it (and checked SotA:63), I started to suspect SotA:64. Stupid liber non grata.

~J

As I suspected, one of the two mages complained all the night about the changes, even though I did let them re-adjust their characters

Here's another question:

The SEARCH power of a spirit, there is no explaination on how much time the spirit will need to find the item or if the spirit can be killed during the search "quest" or so.

Yesterday this happened:

The runners where infiltrating a big producer estate to find an ancient aztec skull and steal it. The skull in reality was a strong POWER FOCUS, and the producer was in reality a vampire. When they were inside the estate, one shaman summoned a spirit and ordered him to find the item. So I had to roll 2x his energy dices against a difficulty dependant on the material resistance. As the skull was in reality a strong power focus, I decided that the TN would have been the force level of the FOCUS. The spirit failed the test and so I just told the shaman that the spirit was "searching" in the estate, then after some minutes I said him the spirit was engaged in astral combat and killed.


How should I have handled this power?

Thanks for the answer.

The fast reply is "hours."

The long reply is to check the actual rules, say, SR4 page 290 or SR4A page 297. It's listed right there in the description of the power.

But as the topic say, we are playing SR3

Whoops, sorry, I forgot. XD

SR3, I don't have handy. But the short answer is still "hours." You'll still find it under the Critter Powers section of the core book.

Remember that only Watcher Spirits get the Search Power.
And they still suck at searching/finding stuff with that one.

Well, In SR4A, the Search Power has an Increment of 10 Minutes... Not Hours.
Unfortunately, IIRC, the Text for the Search Power in SR3 does NOT indicate any time increment (Duration was listed as Special) whatsoever. Maybe in MitS?

Watchers are the only spirits with Search Power, if i remember correctly.
And Watchers simply vanish after force hours.

MitS, p99. Base time 20 minutes, multiplied by a factor related to the area being searched.

~J

Thanks guys, Kagetenshi you are an encyclopedia! I checked on sr3 and critters, damn.

Thabks again

Thanks guys, Kagetenshi you are an encyclopedia! I checked on sr3 and critters, damn.

Thabks again

That's a blatant falsehood.

SR3 watchers get a unique power which is better than Search, as it is guaranteed to never fail. What determines success is merely how long it takes (which may exceed the watcher's lifespan).