Keep in mind that eventually we'll be adding in the various mods from other books. In SR4 there were eventually a half dozen ways to potentially add +armor (not to mention stacking with Form Fitting), and it all got a little bit out of hand, because it wasn't clear what could stack with what.

This rule is less about the SR5 core book, and more about laying the baseline for future products.

No, I think they still make some noise. : P

In my case it will come down to target resistances. Low mental scores and high armor = direct. high mental scores or low armor=indirect. If I want to shoot I make a Street Sam or Gun Adept. BTW those are the damage dealers of the game now. Mages lose primary damage dealing capability which is good considering their versatility.

Indirect spells will usually be better and when they are not chances are illusions or manipulations will be better than direct damage spells. Its not so much that a street sam can out pace their damge by a large margin, though that can be an issue as well. Its that they don't looked balanced within their own options.

Direct spells don't require high force to reach max efficiency, since force only provides a limit. With a spellcasting pool of 12, a force 6 spell is overkill.

Then again, Indirect spells have lower AoE drain anyway.

One of the PCs at my table at Origins was on fire from a firebolt at one point. The AK-97s couldn't do that.

I was trying to maintain a damage dealing apples to apples approach. The different types of spells are superior in many ways because they don't leave a body count. I also think that the reduction is warranted in light of lower resistances (no armor) and lower drain (I must assume that the relative increase carried over to indirect spells as well). Either way I think they are far from useless, they are just not on par with an Assault Rifle.

Neither can an assault canon shell, but with their damage codes, they don't need to. Considering the damage code on an Ares Alpha loaded with explosive rounds and the fact it doesn't require a drain resistance check, I don't think an additional resistable 3P after a full combat turn is a big deal.

Sure but outside fairly extreme cases of either min-maxed mages or super tank/ninja enemies a mage with nominal skill with pistils will be better off with a pistol. A street sam out pacing the mage is one thing, though with the way weapons scale out pace is a bit of an understatement, It just seems off that a mage would probably be better off casting improved agility and popping people with a hold out. Difficult to avoid damage is slick but it scales so incredibly bad that almost any other action the mage could take would be a better option. I can one shot someone with a clout spell out of the gate, even with 30 dice in spellcasting you probably wont one shot someone with a direct damage spell. Will there be situations where it is not a terrible option, I am sure there will be. Will those situations come up often enough that it was a worthwhile investment, I doubt it.

Direct damage spells needed to be fixed, though I think the real issue was overcasting and drain of the spells more than the mechanics of their damage. This just feels like a overcorrection, going from must have to bad choice isn’t great.

Direct damage spells' role is finishers. They make sure you hit and kill a heavily wounded target, especially if that target still has good defense rolls.
I don't think they're supposed to be the main damage spell in an arsenal. It's a bonus tool for a combat mage.

That may be the case, but if any archetype in the game can absorb an overcorrection it is the mage.
I will wait to see the game to make that call, we have too little info right now. as for the hold out pistol...I think I will still prefer the spell vs. armored opponents but that number crunching will have to wait for the book as well.

Fair point on the damage.

I wasn't going to comment further except that it's a magic thread, so this is relevant. It's 3P resistible after a full combat turn, but then it becomes 4P. And then 5P And so on until you spend actions fighting the fire. And that's not including the possibility of acid burning away Armor rating, or electricity zapping away Initiative Score, or cold shattering objects.

EDITED TO ADD: Direct combat spells are great when you don't have real LOS, as with a periscope, mirror, or fiber optics. If you need to take out somebody on the other side of, say, bullet-resistant glass, a direct combat spell is your go-to tool.

This is perfectly true, but my point is that those are all fairly minor effects and that the battle will have probably ended when the burning damage raises to 5P.

All I'm saying is that yes, the elemental effects are to be taken into account. Aside from specific case, they're not powerful enough to close the gap with assault rifles loaded with advanced rounds. Which doesn't bother me - magicians have their own tricks (I can reach effective magic 10 at chargen and summon insanely powerful spirits, or I can turn the enemies against each other), I'm just making the point that mundane weapons haven't been outclassed by magic and are still the best way of dealing straight damage.

I like the direct combat spell nerf. Sams should be king in combat. Not mages.

Throughout the SR4 cycle I have argued (ad nauseam to some, I'm sure) that Shadowrun looks like Magicrun when the many natural limitations to magic are not employed. This is not an aspersion cast at GMs in general, as those limitations often needed a constant attention to details of the environment that taxed an already busy GM.

So, for the likely situation that magic is not limited as much as it could be, magic in SR4 is overpowered. (Didn't think I'd ever say that!) Pulling back on direct combat spells counteracts that likely situation. OK, so as GM I don't have to work so hard to keep the mage in line with the rest of the crew.

What this change does not do is take away the incredible diversity of the magician who has a selection of spells and spirits. Without having looked at the SR5 rules, I guess the magician is still the Swiss army knife of the team. I'm still going to like playing a magician.

Remember of course that one of the advantages of mages is that they can do their damage from the moon through a telescope.

Maybe not, but they can do it from a really long way away, and manabolt doesn't tell you where the caster is, just that he can see you.

A bullet does not tell you where the sniper is, it just says that he can see you.

By the new rules? How? Are you talking about a power focus? Won't drain put you in the hospital?

Drain might sting and give you 6-7 stun boxes.

Magic 7 (using exceptional attribute) + Power Focus 3 (available at creation if you have the karma) = Effective Magic 10.
With Summoning, the appropriate specialization (which you should have if you're in the risky business of summoning force 10 spirits) and potentially +2 dice from a mentor spirit (only exists for air and water spirits so far, though. I expect to see more in future books), you roll 18-20 dice. Plus edge, which seems like a valuable investment.

The spirit rolls 10 dice to resist being summoned in the opposed test, and the successes it gets are also used for drain (2 * successes). If you're not really unlucky you have to resist 6-8 stun drain (might be a good idea to use edge!), which you should be able to reduce to 3-5 Stun. Stings, but now you have a tremendously powerful spirit with 2-3 services owed to you. You now have a fire spirit able to attack with an elemental ranged attack of 20P -10AP with a pool of 22 dice for the attack roll, and that will deal 20P to you if you attempt to kill it in melee.
Of course, armor of 20 against any non-magical attack, body of 11, yadayada.

The only counter that really works is an enemy mage with a good dice pool using banishing. Short of that, you can pretty much kill a red sam squad.

I don't disagree with that at all. I think mages needed a huge ass nerf bat overall what I'd prefer is Sams getting a big boost with a less hard hit from the nerf bat to mages. Like I said they just don't seem balanced in their own medium of spells. And while I have no issue with mages using guns I'd prefer it be because they want to avoid drain and not because direct damage spells blows Not that mages wold use guns, they would just mind contorl you or whatever.

I'll see your super-spirit and raise you a sniper. =i)

Probably not enough to kill the spirit, and certainly not enough if it's in a combat situation. In a very specific situation, it works, but so does a water cannon in my fire spirit example. Or a missile.

Why on earth would the sniper target the spirit. Dead mage = solved spirit problem.

I have heard of mages, who are able to command their spirits from astral space. But maybe that's some basesless myth...

WHAT! Your not a Mystic Adept!?!? What's wrong with you?
That's sarcasm in case you missed it.

I thought you going for the 7 + 3. Is "Effective Magic" a thing in SR5? I thought that a Power Focus could add dice to all rolls made using Magic. By the new rules, doesn't that mean that 4 successes by the spirit would give you 8P damage?

I thought you were going to go for a force 14 sprit. That would be "insanely powerful", and the highest rating you could muster from chargen, unless the upcoming rules are different from what I'm expecting.

The sick part is that you could use edge on both the summoning and the drain resistance and pull something like that off, but you'd be hurting afterward. Maybe forego the 3 extra Magic dice and max out your drain soak instead. That's the real way in the new edition, it seems to me.

Power Foci add to your magic rating, as written in SR5O p. 319.
This means that a force 10 Spirit gives you stun Drain. A Force 14 Spirit would inflict physical drain, as would a force 20 spirit (the maximum you can summon at CharGen, and with 5-6 IPs and 40P -20AP damage, nothing short of a small god. However, the drain has a significant chance of killing you).

That would be quite powerful! I would like to see how game now uses Magic rating in various capacities.

The biggest deal is that Magic, not Force, determines the damage base for indirect spells.

So how much is the Power Focus 3 and how much karma to bind it?

That's only true in the Quick Start Rules, I think.

True... SR5O base indirect damage is Force + net hits

Direct Combat spells -- DV = Net Hits
Indirect Combat spells -- DV = Force + Net Hits (AP -Force, Soaked with Body + Armor) and can have elemental effects

Aw, I liked the higher base.

So its the nature of being a indeirect attack that gives the AP, or is it like 4e where it is the elemental effect? The AP was the larger effect of the elemental effect, if its being indirect that creates the AP what is the increase in drain for adding a elemental effect?

Presumably to do with the other effects of the element?

That might mean we might see more indirect spells without an elemental effect to increase drain through the roof.

They're magical so they'll bypass ItNW... just not get the half armor effect (assuming it's still halve as opposed to -4 that electricity was changed to). But they'll do plenty of damage to a materialized spirit without armor and otherwise function as a magical 'gun' with reasonably low drain. The SR equivalent of magic missile.. only with a to-hit roll.



Also, can you please cite the relevant text for power foci. It would be a huge change from existing rules and it also causes all kinds of problems if they let Adepts bind them... (adepts get a PP per point of magic... so if it temporarily raises raw magic do they get temporary adept powers... especially ones they could respec each time they turn the focus on and off). Original SR4 adepts could only bound weapon foci... the rest were off limits. SR4a allowed them to bind anything IIRC.

Put simply... the SR4 power foci limited the worst problems that used to come up with power foci. Merely adding dice to Magic + whatever tests without changing force limits. It got rid of one of the biggest abuses in the older system.

Elemental AP seems to have been changed entirely, Falconer, such that it's not constant across elements anymore. Fire spells, for example, get AP equal to Force. Combat Mages would now be well advised to vary their elements, it seems - Fire works better against armour, Electricity offers the possibility to brick devices and drop Initiative (offering some chance to take away a pass)...

My point was at a cost.... of severely increased drain.

Adding an elemental effect increases the drain by +2 over a non-elemental version of the spell. People always forgot an indirect spell didn't need to be elemental... it's just almost all the example spells were.

Under the old rules... i could do a spell to hit a target with a ball of non-elemental magic. Do damage like a gun using normal Body + armor (but bypassing ItNW hardened armor), only using force + net hits for damage based on my strong casting stat. For a single target spell it would only have a +1 drain code as opposed to a +3 for a flamethrower/lightningbolt. Essentially under the old rules I could cast it at 4 points higher force for the same drain which was an instant +4 damage... (equivalent to removing 12 points of armor for an elemental effect if you think about it that way).

It does seem like the non-elemental indirects may have a purpose, yeah, but the exact drain modifier for elements effects is yet to be seen; my understanding is that the drain modifiers have gotten a retool for the change to Force instead of half Force.

There's always the direct combat spell + low Force + high reagents combo.

No, they don't in SR5O. So Power Foci's magic increase is only marginally useful for adepts.

How does the specific rules text differ from that in SR4A?

Aren't you going to still need direct spells to hit astral targets? I guess you could always engage in astral combat now. That'd be nice to have astral combat not be lame.

Like wise, spells can't be hacked. So the Street Sam has multiple threats to deal with, Matrix and Meat, and sometimes Magic. A Mage would only really need to worry about two of those things. So it seems really unfair for a Mage to out class a Sam in meat combat when magic has so much more versatility and has nothing to worry about from Matrix threats; while the sam does.

Do they help with the drain? Drain is Force + x + hits, right? Or by low, do you mean at your Magic rating to keep the drain Stun damage?

If I got it right, he means low in the sense of as low as you can get. Lets say force 4 and you have magic 6.
The drain is based on force 4 but the damage is based on magic 6. So by all means I can't see why direct spells should be bad... They are the typical start low get high type of magic.
I need to look into after I get the book, but if the drain is at least 2 applys after quickcasting and multicasting, then they will get very usefull... (I still thing this only one offensive action should be cut)

+edge.

I can see how that could be useful. Cast a direct combat spell at Force 1, get 6 hits, deal Magic + 6 DV. Drain will be 7 + x instead of 12 + x.

And as far as the preview states, it's one attack per turn. This "offensive action" business leads to all sorts of interpretational confusion.

It's not in the power focus rule, it's in the Power Point gain rules. You only gain the Power Point when you increase your Magic rating, not when you boost it with a focus.


That works, too, if you've got plenty of Edge.

That is true, though at least as a human mage you will have ample edge to do that once and a while.