♪ This was a triumph, making a note here huge success,
Its hard to overstate my satisfaction... ♪

Snipers with gel rounds and a team ready to move in with the magemask and magecuffs. Then forcibly introduce the mage to the path of the burnout

Catgirl strippers with tasers!

I'm not actually confident that wouldn't geek the mage. There's two culprits for this.

1. Mages, with generally higher willpower scores than body, are more likely to sport a higher stun damage track than physical damage track.
2. The way combat turns work.

#1 creates a situation where a mage has a better shot of remaining conscious after the gel round than other characters.
#2 creates a problem were you declare all your actions prior to resolving them.

So our sniper gets 2 attacks but he must elect to fire one or both at the mage. He can't declare and resolve the first action, see that the mage is still standing and fire a second shot. So since mages might need 2 shots to KO but their stun track is larger than physical, it creates a troublesome situation where it's very easy for a sniper to geek a mage with non-lethal means. At least, that would be my concern. If the sniper instead only elects to attack the mage once and he's not KOed, then the mage gets to respond which can screw everything up.

Stick-n-shock is probably the better ammo choice over gel rounds.

Not really in this case. In a sniper rifle, the damage value would be DOWNgraded by using SnS, and since it does not have a reference to the "don't tase me roll" in the description of the ammunition, that means that SnS does not force that roll. (Having the (e) on the chart does not automatically force the roll if it's not referenced in the description.)

Capsule rounds with DMSO and Slab are better. Mages have a lower-than-normal Body, so they're bound to be out for many hours.

What?

Downgrading the damage is precisely the reason why I suggest using SnS ammunition. As I said. You have to declare all your actions at the beginning of your turn before you resolve any. That is the point where you need to decide if you're going to double tap a target or only shoot him once. If shooting him once isn't going to KO him, you need the second shot declared then. So by lowering your damage through using SnS you increase the odds that you do need to double tap while reducing the odds that a double tap is going to geek the mage.

The "don't taze me bro" effect needs to be saved against any time you take electrical damage. Page 164. SnS replaces the weapons damage code with 6S(e) and the (e) indicates that the weapon deals an electricity damage attack (page 311 sidebar for damage code).

If you'll pay attention to the descriptions of the weapons though, all of the other ones specifically reference it. Stick-n-Shock does not, and as such does not cause the effect.

Weren't you the one raging against rules-lawyer-y weasel-wording a few weeks back, All4?

The point is, if they wanted the ammo to have that effect like the other weapons do, they would have referenced it in the description like they did with the other ones.

People gripe about it being supposedly broken when they're the ones "breaking" it by having it do something that the description does not include.

Right, let's simply ignore the fact that the damage code lists it as electricity, the fact that the description of SnS states it pulses electricity, and the Electricity Damage section states a broad claim that similar electrically charged weapons also follow those rules.

Those other weapons as I've already stated twice already, specifically reference the roll. The ammo does not, and so it doesn't have it. Requires no special "digging for loopholes", only following the rules as they are written without adding to or making assumptions that aren't stated.

Seems to me that people argue against this because it disproves their belief that the ammo is "broken".

That's definitional 'weasel-word rules lawyering". And I have nothing more to say on that matter.

Okay so what's the damage code for stick and shock?



So what does (e) mean?



So what is electricity damage?



Requires only following the rules as they are written without adding to or making assumptions that aren't stated.

Electricity damage causes knock out; general rule.
SnS provides no specific rule that counteracts the effect of the general rule. Thus general rule applies, SnS very much tase you.
Questions?

Stun Baton: Referenced, and thus has it.



Shock Gloves: Referenced.



AZ-150 Stun Baton: Referenced.



Stick-n-Shock: No reference.


Again, I say the argument to have it on the ammo is because the people who dislike it don't like they're view of it being "broken" being disproven.

I thought the main reason SnS was considered broken, was because of it's spirit murdering capacity.
Referenced or not it still does electricity damage so the point is moot, it doesn't explicitly state that SnS doesn't induce the effect. So it follows the general rule for electricity damage.

SnS ammo being perceived as broken is not based on the fact that it deals electricity damage. It's based on the fact that SnS provides an increase of damage and armor penetration well above what the weapon would have. Changing a weapon from 4P/0AP or 5P/0AP to 6S/-half and it's against impact armor instead of ballistic and impact is traditionally lower than ballistic already. Say you have 12/10 armor? Your 5P/0AP pistol is now a 6S/-5AP weapon. The ammo would still be broken even if it didn't get the chance to incapacitate.

Yes, the ammo type is just outright broken. I have no issues with what it does to spirits (which have a fundamentally flawed scaling mechanism). I have tons of issues of what it does to players and NPCs.

The -2 penalty... on top of the save or die knockout... is the problem (unconscious is worse than dead in SR when I can just grab a knife and finish you or prep you for all kinds of other *fun*). As well as the half armor electrical bit AND increasing the damage code of most small handheld weapons. I'd have zero issues if SnS was a shotgun only round... okay I'm shooting the equivalent of a large battery at them and discharging it all at once.... but in a hold out pistol?

There's reasons this round is very commonly house ruled.

Emphasis mine. As StealSigma well laid out, the rules are not fuzzy at all whether or not SnS ammo deals electricity damage. They clearly also incur the elemental secondary effects of electricity.

I don't think the incapacitation is really part of the problem. The -2 penalty is a problem as is how it affects weapon damage. The incapacitation check is a threshold 3 test to avoid incapacitation but even a modest 9 dice is not at all hard to obtain for the check. 3 from body, 3 from willpower, 3 from half impact armor.

--



It's Stealth, not Steal. I'm not a thief.

Also, thanks, even though we disagree on barriers and called shot.

Stealth... now work out your probability curves.. 9 dice works out to just under a 40% chance of knockout.

People always forget the average doesn't matter it's the number of times you don't roll at least 3. And if you're getting shot twice, make that test twice per pass... now you're up to over half the time knocked out if the damage doesn't do it on it's own. Then of course there's the stun damage modifier and the -2 for electrical on top of it... if you do make them both. And lets not forget it's unique utility against drones and electronics (forced shutdown while it reboots).

So you're basically discreet math.
Yes awful, I know.

9 dice is modest and likely the minimum anyone who would be subjected to it on a semi-regular basis would have. Consider any street sammy is going to have a higher body score. Mages would have higher willpower. Higher values of impact armor thanks to PPP is also trivial. Non-conductivity is extremely cheap. Raising that three more to 12 dice and basically permitting you to buy hits to pass the test is not hard at all.

--



Discrete summation.

Sorry, but "6S(e)" is clearly electricity damage


Thats as obivous as rules can get.

Mentioning it in the descriction text and in the damage-code is redundant.


Also, if stick'n'shock wouldn't be electricity damage, it would be just as broken, since it would have AP -half anyway, but Nonconductivity Armor Modification wouldn't even help anymore.

so I should debate stick-n-shock rules til the mage kills herself?
got it.

So far how to deal with this specific mage I have
1. talk to them
2. hammer them

for how to deal with mages during a run I have
1. plenty
2. of good ideas

to deal with mages out among the general populace I have
1. hope
2. pray
Apparently for your average citizen, not only is defenses against magic not common, they're just not available.

I like the style of your synopsis

To comment on your last 2 points:
Due to the low percentage of actual magicians, and under those magicians the number of magicians with psychotic tendencies, most people won't ever be in danger.
As a runner, where you frequently have contact with a) magicians and b) psychos ... well, there's the kicker

Magic is not undetectable (6-Force perception threshold) and given the public fear of magi, most low-lives wouldn't mind putting a cap in any mage that sparkle at them, unfortunately magi are just as succeptible to bullets as anyone else (Disclaimer: do not apply on possessed magi)
For the civilian low-life, they're only hope is that they got someone to look out for them, gangs, a local street shaman, batman..
For the average shady dealer, they usually have things like botany, wards, spirit body guards and the such.
The average citizen has the law, and mace... mace still works on magi, works really well. Breaks LoS and distract them.
The law has training in how to combat mages, and their own mages.

There's always of course the old trick of having that one NPC they decide to screw with be a dragon or IE in disguise. Not to be overused, but if it happens once... People suddenly get very edgy around bums.

So for the most part a mage like this isn't even a worry. I'm just unlucky enough to have it happen in my first game?

No, see appendix a) and b)
The shadows are a place where a lot of specialized talent (read: magically active people, some of them even trained) and survivors wash up.
Seeing as it takes a very special mindset to survive in the cracks of society, a high percentage of those people are what 'normal' society would classify as at least highly antisocial (read: psychotic).
The two quantities sometimes intersect, giving you, in the end, a much higher chance to meet a psychotic mage who does shadowruns

But honestly, I just think it's a misunderstanding of boundaries.

I'm curious, and if you don't mind, I have a few questions:
1) How many players are in your group
2) How many of them have played RPGs before trying SR?
3) What kind of RPGs, if applicable?
4) Average age?

PCs are anything but average, as such some will feel inclined to bully around those that are weaker then themselves. The thing is, they to are small fish in a big pond full of sharks.
So while Mr Average the janitor have no chance in hell of defending himself against a mage capable of running the shadows. Mr mage of the shadows will feel as insignificant, if not more when confronted with the endless resources of a megacorp.
So how does a shadowrunner survive then? same way fish do in shark infested waters. They stay hidden, they don't draw attention to themselves. They try to blend with the stim. Because being faceless in the masses, is surviving.

YUp. If your players think they can get away with taunting KE or any Mega's security dept something is very wrong. “The nail that sticks up gets hammered down”.

3 players. had 4 but 4th had to return to Alaska.

all of them have played rpg's before

not sure what everyone's gaming experience is. personally, I began in D&D 3.5, Ran a rifts game for a short time, played in a fallout game that was somewhat homebrew, Ran many one shot XD20* games, Played the Battletech RPG, played D&D 4.0 (not a fan), Played pathfinder, Ran a my little pony game for awhile, played in a firefly game, And now I'm running a shadowrun game.

age wise, we range from 18 to however old NPC is. I forgot his age.


so, now psycho mages are relatively common on the street, and we're back to geek the mage as the only solution.
Is this common or not? If it's common then San fran is about to lack a mage population due to all the mages being killed off in a mass genocide fueled by fear.
I've seen one mage that's not an NPC, and they're psychopathic, so I don't have a good sense of what's the norm.

I like much of the setting shadowrun has. Having dragons, and other mythological creatures are cool. But mages are giving me trouble.
It's like in X-men. Prof. Xavier can control people with his mind. If he wasn't such a nice guy, then you'd want him dead for the safety of everyone else, many do anyway. And every mage has the potential to be prof. Xavier.


*XD20 is an extremely simple system from The XDM: Xtreme dungeon mastery. If you haven't heard of it, or the XDM check them out. The XDM was written by Travis, and Curtis Hickman, and was illustrated by Howard Jordan.
The XD20 system is so simple I have it memorized.

Uhm, You might want to check out the general gaming forum... Those there shadowbronies are always open for extras...

Most magi would be full-time well paid employees for some big corp, there's a fair few magi in the shadows... most of them mostly sane. You don't get work or a long life as a sociopath

shadowbronies? like shadowrun with ponies? intriguing

...how would they hold the guns? the unicorns can use their magic, but what about the pegasi, who you'd really want wielding the guns. I guess in the future they could have shoulder mounted guns with smartlink so you could fire them with a thought. and if the gun was attached to your armor it could possibly get recoil comp just for how it's mounted, equal to your body. of course you would have to be facing the way you want to shoot your gun. Wait! no, there's that robot tripod attachment that lets you control your gun like a drone, with that your shoulder mounted gun would be like a turret with 360 degree firing arc. that would be some kick ass air support...

I apologize...

no I don't


So now the debate is whether psycho mages are common enough to really be a problem.

Not really, most magi good enough to do anything worthwhile are either runners or wagemages (employed by companies) A runner lives and dies by his reputation. Only the most morally depraved Johnson would hire a mage with a rep of throwing lighting bolts at pedestrian and even then it would probably be a complete suicide mission. Without the paychecks you end up on the street or in the gutter. So even magi with quirks are bound to stay in line. For their own safety and for their ongoing survival.

Ofcourse there will be the odd outliers but those are prone into falling into the corrupt paths Toxics, insect shamans, blood magi and the like.
These are completely abhorrent to society and have bounties on their heads.

I'm not saying, Psycho Mages run rampant on the streets with lesbian vampire ninja elves. Just that the percentage of both is significantly higher _running the shadows_ than them occuring in the world that occasionally sees the light.

I liked the fish metaphor made earlier.
When you look down from your boat, on the top of the water you see the big swarms of small fish. They are tasty and look shiny as they move through the ocean in giant quantities. Those are the general populace, obviously.
Below them, there are the sharks. Sometimes they eat the small fish (even if Finding Nemo tries to teach you something else ), but mostly the small fish don't even see those big maws.
And below the sharks .. in the dark ... there are the leviathans, that even the sharks hide from.

This is more of a stream of consciousness right now and I hope, I get my point across.
Yes, there are psycho mages. The general populace fears and shudders when you tell those stories at a campfire, but if you get to a 100 years of age, you won't ever meet one.
If you are living in the shadows though, the story might be different. You'll meet mages during your life and criminal career, and one or two of them might be seriously whacked out and dissect puppies in their basements each sunday. On the other hand, if you're crossing paths with these people, you might be a samurai with a reflexbooster and perfectably capable of killing the mage before his spell goes off.


I asked those question because I've seen issues like the ones you're describing before.
In short, the probability of such behaviour rises with lower average age and, believe it or not, when the players have mostly played 'hero' type RPGs before.
SR is, in comparison to, let's say D&D and its derivates rather sandbox-y (yes, that's a word now, if it wasn't already) and you don't actually play a hero that gets away with most of the stuff he does, because well, ... he's a hero. Not only a hero, a protagonist even!
You've played a nice mage in Fhaerun (or whatever that world is called) before and crawled your dungeons and found the treasure in a usually rather organized way. There is no moral question, because dragons are colour coded for your convenience. I'm exaggerating, of course, but I hope the point gets across.
Now you're confronted with playing a criminal with possibly superhuman capabilities. Suddenly you have the the question of how said criminal interacts with those around him that are significantly weaker than him, and there's no real mechanic in place to punish you for bad behaviour, apart from in-game laws and consequences.
It's just natural to experiment a bit to get your bearings, and by doing this, a typical group will encounter different ways of approaching these moral questions and sometimes there will be a need to discuss just how deep and dark you want to take your game.
I've heard a comparison once between CP2020 and SR, where it was said that the good fairy gets raped and killed, but the question really is: Are you and your group comfortable with topics like these? You don't really get an answer if you don't discuss the topic. Offplay, that is, not just deciding one-sidedly and using the inplay hammer and _telling_. (Not that I'm insinuating that you're doing this)

Coming from you, Tiberius, and your fellow player, these are at least 50% of the people sitting at your table that do not want to deal with the mindrape topic as a regular occurrence. Judging from this, I'd say that there is a need for putting the subject on the table

1) 4 including GM.
2) We have all played RPGs, some have had years of experience, others are less experienced (though not by much).
3) Majored in d20 with a minor in World of Darkness; Rifts, GURPS, Dark Heresy, and a few others rounding out my experience.
4) My age is 25.

I would certainly like to study at your university!
Thanks for the answers, though. I can see you've had your share of grimdarkness ^^

Like I said I don't know about the games of the other players went, but in mine people never seemed to play heroes.
Not even in my little pony. let that one sink in.

I really want to differentiate between the character, and the player
I like the player. He's cool.
I HATE the character. She frustrates me thematically, mechanically, and morally.

The problem is, the player is invested in the character, and has this cool story set up, having to find the killers of her siblings. The problem is this interesting story is attached to this sociopathic character that I hate.

The character feels like a villain the crew would be hired to find, not a main character on the team.

and would killing the character really solve the problem? mechanically yes, the player just makes a new mage that isn't evil. But the the tone set is still there. the game opened up with a beautiful loving scene interrupted by a mage trying to force the man to kill his girlfriend. That's how the story starts. that's the tone set for the story.

tone is important

pulp fiction opens with this couple who are clearly in love, kissing and then robbing the diner, followed by the music. That's the tone. it was a good tone. The couple wasn't out to kill, they were clever, they were likable, they had a plan. That set the tone, a very... pulp fiction like tone. that's the best way to put it.

UP has that amazing opening with the two meeting, and showing their life together in only a few minutes. it setup the tone of the film, among many other things.

So how do you change the tone mid-story without having to change settings? I could go to space, I like space, but I put a lot of work into San Fran, and rather like it.

UP is a perfect example, in my opinion.
I've found the opening scene awfully depressing and the rest lighthearted and funny, while not being disconnected from each other.
I'm not saying it's easy to find a middle ground, but your description of the engaging background might be something?
Obviously, I am not in the know about your whole situation, but in my imagination, I'd say something like

"Hey, we need to talk. See, there's this thing your character has been doing and it bugs me and that random NPC over there. You're using your magic to basically mindrape innocent bystanders en masse, and while it's certainly a valid choice in the freedom of an RPG, I am simply not comfortable with the tone (or theme) you're setting by doing this. I generally like your character and her background story, but this is something I cannot overlook in the long run. Also, there is plenty of ingame flak coming your way, and if your character keeps doing stuff like that, it will at some point boil over and probably kill her, at which point that nice background will be wasted. Can we find a compromise? I would be most happy if you stopped doing it with such wild abandon and use it in a less morally questionable way that also does not alienate other players AND their characters. What are your thoughts?"

Maybe the character will react to the ingame hints you've been giving. Maybe then all will go the way of a change in tone, with a few added points in notoriety, maybe a bad rep negative quality she needs to work hard on to re-establish. She has to deal with a lot of personal, judging from the background snippet you mentioned, so maybe that neck-snapping thing was a reaction to that, storywise, and not just the player trying what he can do with his character?
Remember though: that one character is not the only protagonist in your game, it's just one of three.
Maybe the character won't change her ways. Then kill her or do something equally drastic because that shit don't fly, in the long run.

While this may be true, that neck snapping thing was literally the first thing to happen in the game. Tiberius describes the scene to our mage and asks, "What do you do?" the mage replies with make the guy snap the girl's neck. It was literally less than 30 seconds before the mage started acting psycho.

Yeah, I got that
I was offering a possible ratio behind the character's and players line of thinking
Character: "Damn, I'm really pissed about this latest lead not finding the killers and I FUCKING HATE KISSING PEOPLE"
Player "Hm. Maybe I should find out, what this mind control thing does?"

Obviously, I'm not agreeing with either and both are pure speculation, but if it's important to find a reason ... well, there's one off the top of my hat.
Also, at least the offplay reason might, while not necessarily good, be at least understandable.

Hell, the first thing MY first character did was fire his panther assault cannon at a cop car.
Granted, I was 12 back then, but there you have it. You know what they say, men only turn 7, afterwards they only continue growing

My fingers betrayed me. They've been trying all day, with things like "wit h" (just happened three times trying to type that out) and "m/n" switches on me. I think they're planning something.

And yeah, when someone's right they're right. When I think the rules can be interpreted differently I'll debate it.


It's actually kinda easy to get all the special armor mods at rating 6 due to stacking armor and clothing.


The defense the average citizen has against magic is the same that any citizen has against those with guns - mages are licensed and moderately monitored. If someone with a gun starts shooting people up the police are going to come running. If someone starts casting random spells all over the place then the police are really going to drop the hammer, because magic is scary to mundanes.


Yes. My first mage had Control Thoughts - I only remember using it to make some lab technicians go to the bathroom while we stole what we had to.

In other news, what I think you should do with your problem character is have them read this thread all the way through.

You talk to the player(s) and everyone agrees that certain things never actually happened and won't happen again. Or something really bad happens to the characters involved. And either way life goes on.

One thing that really bothers me with shadowrun drugs is that none of them has a power, speed or vector listed (except trance, which has a speed of 1 min) and no one knows what to do if i drug an unwiling target. Slab is a surgical aid drug, not a dedicated combat drug - why should it work immediately?

Fisk, have you ever been put under for surgery? Even just a simple, small dose of valium, for dental surgery, will knock most folks out within seconds of being administered.

When I had my wisdom teeth out, at age 18, my head started swimming within half a second of the first DROP of the stuff hitting my bloodstream. I was unconscious within two seconds of that.

Yes, i have been - and i am a medical student, so i know quite a bit about these things. The problem is, things that put you down like slab will kill you on overdose, and do not work when underdosed. If you apply them to someone with a DMSO, you can never be certain how much of the stuff is actually put into the bloodstream, and does not stick on a kevlar plate or such, meaning that either overdoses or fails should be common if applied that way.

Maybe use a dart gun instead of a capsule round then? The skill is rarer, but if worst comes to worst you can just load up your skillwires and go. Far more reliable 'all or nothing' injection without the risk of overdosing.