I realize that there's already a SR5 Magic thread (9 pages long) but the majority of it seems to have been done when few people had the books, and most were going on what they heard, rather than what they new, so I though I'd start a thread with what I've been looking at.

I wasn't much of a 4th edition player, but based on experience and discussions with 3rd and 4th, it seems Mages could use a little bit of a nerf bat with regards to say, stunbolt.

But does it sort of seem like they went too far in the other direction?

Drain is Force instead of Force/2. Okay. That's not too bad.
Drain can't be healed magically? I'm good with it, I thought it was silly in the first place.
Drain can't benefit from a medkit? That seems like you're taking it a step further and punishing them.

Aspected Magicians. What the heck happened here?
"Well sure. I can take a normal magician with slightly lower magic, or I can take an aspected magician, have an extra skill, but I lose out on 35 karma of spells or alchemical preparations and projecting. Let me think." sure, I know. Roleplay and not Rollplay. But you could roleplay being an aspected magician by playing a regular magician, that just doesn't take the other two skill groups.

Foci being built quicker seems like an okay idea to me. Except for some odd reason you can't use edge on the test (although on extended tests you can), you're not guaranteed to get the focus force that you want, and if you critical glitch, you don't lose a point of magic. You lose a point of ESSENCE. Really? Losing a point of Magic wasn't enough, you have to twist the knife just a little bit more?

Rituals. So. If I want to cast an illusion at a guy, I have to purchase one ritual. But if the spell I want to send is a combat spell, I have to purchase another ritual? Does this just sound like random karma drain at this point? I'm sort of okay with Watchers and Warding being, well, maybe not rituals, but something to spend karma on so you can do, but as rituals it seems bizarre. If I want to ward someone's house, I have to go there, spend hours setting up the ritual lodge, then spend hours performing the ritual? Or if I'm reading this right, I can perform the warding on an object, then take it to the location, and hope the object doesn't get kicked around or knocked about at the location (not to mention pissing people off by driving a ward with a 6 meter radius throughout town).

The Watcher is even more bizarre. What's the point of a Watcher at this time? Before its "Oh man, I suddenly need a quick messenger or something." In the era of commlinks, that seems less necessary, but even if you do need the watcher for communication, it still takes minutes to summon compared to the near instant of SR3 era. And that's only if you've spend the hours making the lodge first. You're SOL if this issue/need comes up when you're not at your lodge. And to top that off, I can summon a normal spirit as a Complex action. Why not use that if I need a spirit? What's the Watcher's purpose?

Not sold on Alchemical preparations. I kind of like the idea, but the fact that you have to purchase spells separately from what you can cast seems like its just been turned into a karma sink rather than a new ability.

So those ar emy thoughts. What am I missing, what am I not understanding, what am I taking out of context or just wrong about?

My biggest complain is about spirits. They didn't update the spirits, which were the most broken things about magic in SR4. They've only done a half-assed fix for spirit Edge, which wasn't much of a problem. And the Movement power is now even more broken that it ever was.

Drain is a type of fatigue, not physical damage. (except for overcasting or whatever term for how 5e does it). Medkit's really aren't designed to 'heal' fatigue, only rest/sleep can do that.
Fatigue(drain) can be countered by drugs if you need an immediate pick me up, but the user will have to deal with the fall out later.

Pretty sure you never could.

I may mention the word Balance in this a bit. As anyone who's read my posts elsewhere will know I don;t often adhere to "game balance" as a perfect ideology. That said I do adhere to the concept of mechanical balance in a ruleset to allow people to have fun with their concepts and not feel utterly overshadowed and overpowered by the rest of the group.

I can get behind the loss of essence in a bad botch for Artifacing. Creating Items of Power (especially high force ones) should have a level of Risk involved and iirc SR3 was similarly dangerous in the making of the high powered stuff.

As for Rituals. Yes they are a bit karma sinky, but I can understand why and I like the fact that you have to learn a different Ritual for a different class of spell. In SR3 all we really needed was one skill and probably centering and that was it for Rituals, now there is a progression and ability aspect to them outside of that and I think it is one of the things that helps balance magic progression vs 'Ware, Tech or Matrix. Everything in the mage's versatility now comes with a choice that has to be made within that bracket.

Drain not being heal-able. Yeah I didn't understand it much either at first glance. But then I reasoned that if it's essentially the force of mana overloading your own Mystic System then I can see why a medkit wont do much about it nor other magics. It fits with the classical "cost" of magic in myth where that which you do to yourself can only be recovered by time. Again it also helps balance things down between Magic and Tech.

Now, RE the Watchers and Warding and so forth. The Hours for creating a Ritual Lodge can be utterly ignored with Reagents. One of the uses of reagents is to use Force in Drams to create a Temporary Ritual Lodge that takes Minutes X Force to set up and lasts 1 hour per Dram. Reagents are VERY useful things to have as a mage in SR5 and are a pretty cool way of having telesma in the game. reagents do a lot. So that makes warding easier and viable outside of the Lodge.

Watchers.... took me some time to work out too. Most of the time a Spirit seems better. However. Watchers exist at hours per hit on the roll, handy if you can roll well and don't want to mess around with Binding spirits given they have the sunset/sunrise thing. There are no Services for Watchers, they just do what you want them too for as long as they are around. Again that's better than a Summoned Spirit for rudimentary remote services, which make Watchers using their Search power REALLY good at what Watchers always used to be good for. Finding things. because there IS no remote service to a Watcher. Also, while they are not as quick as a complex action with Reagents watchers can be summoned pretty quickly still. The watcher Ritual is Force in minutes to do. So if you want a quick F6 Watcher and you have reagents it will take 12 minutes to get one.

Alchemy, yeah not massively sold on that either I think there should be some better trigger descriptions.

That depend on how you go about them, personally i was planning on building myssad alchemist with no actual spells just preparations.
Yeah their a karma sink if you try to be able to do everything, but if you look at it as a totally differend ability then it doesn't have to be.

Another way to go is to look at the list of spell and decide what you need as actual spell and what would be better as preparations, you mostly don't need something as both a spell and preparation.
For example increased reflexes might be better as preparation then spell, if you don't expect to get into more then 1 or 2 fights per run, as it circumvents a need for a high force health sustaining focus.

Wow. Thanks for pointing out the artificing rules, they are just... I don't know what to say. Guess I will work on some house rules.

The focus creation rules seem more than a little goofy right now. Not only can you explicitly not spend Edge on the test for some reason, but by the RAW it is almost impossible to create a Force X focus using a Force X formula. Why? Consider:

To create the focus, you make a Artificing + Magic [formula Force] v. Formula Force + telesma’s Object Resistance test. Your net hits on this test determine the actual Force of the focus. Given that the formula Force is your Limit on the test, that means that no matter how well you roll, every hit on the opposed roll subtracts from the maximum Force of the focus. How bad is this? Let's run some numbers.

According to the Object Resistance chart on page 295, the lowest possible OR is 3 (for Natural Objects such as trees, unprocessed water, hand-carved wood, and so on). So, for a Force 1 formula (the "easiest" formula you can use) the opposed roll is 4 dice. Given that you have a Limit of 1, this means that if those 4 dice yield even a single hit, you fail. Crunching the numbers, this yields about a 19% success rate, assuming you always score at least one hit. Put differently, this means it takes about 5 tries to successfully create a Force 1 focus using a Force 1 formula. Given that it takes (formula Force) days per attempt, that's only about 5 days.

What about higher force formula? Let's assume we're trying to build a Force 6 focus with a Force 6 formula using a telesma with OR 3. Assuming we always roll as many hits as the formula Force Limit allows, this gives us a success rate of 2%. Put another way, it takes an average of 40 attempts to successfully create a Force 6 focus from a Force 6 formula. Given that it requires 6 days per attempt, this means it takes an average of 240 days to make the focus when rolling perfectly.

So far, we've been assuming that you roll as well as the Limit allows. What happens to the numbers if you don't? Let's start by taking a look at a mage who dabbles in artificing:



A non-specialist has a "reasonable" chance of making a Force 1 focus; almost 20%. Given that each attempt only takes a day, it's likely that within a week he or she will be successful. Making a Force 6 focus, on the other hand, is nigh impossible: with the chance of success being a fraction of a percent, it will take such a character an average of almost nine years to create the focus.

What about a specialist? Let's look at the highest pool we can reasonably achieve at character creation: 6 Magic, 7 Artificing (via Aptitude quality) and a specialty in focus creation.



Our specialist has the same chance as the non-specialist to create a Force 1 focus; the Limit of 1 plus the size of the opposing pool really makes this test a question of "do they roll a hit or not"- skill doesn't factor into it. This seems a bit counter intuitive. Shouldn't a character specializing in focus creation be better at making low force foci than one who "dabbles" at it?

More disturbing is the Force 6 stats: our "specialist" still has only a 1% chance of success, and still requires almost two years to succeed.

Alright; how about the absolute pinnacle of metahuman achievement: Magic 18 (Grade 6 initiate, Force 6 Power Focus), Artificing 15 (13 base w/Aptitude, +2 specialty)



There you have it; even with stats well beyond the ken of mortal runners, the chance of making a Force 1 focus is no better than our "dabbler", and creating a Force 6 focus still requires the better part of a year.

Let's try another angle: maybe this behavior is intentional. What if the mechanics are designed to force you to use a formula with a higher Force than the focus you're trying to make? That might be a reasonable interpretation. Let's take a look at our uber-artificer again. He's still trying to make a Force 6 focus, but this time he's using higher Force formulae:



Well, that's interesting. Increasing the formula Force helped.. to a point. A Force 8 formula gave our uber-enchanter a 17% chance of success, but upping the formula Force beyond that quickly caused the success chance to plunge. Counterintuitively, the best way for our uber-enchanter to make a Force 6 power focus is using a Force 8 formula. Not Force 7, not Force 9- Force 8. Even then, with a dice pool about as high as the game mechanics allow, he's looking at an average of 6 attempts and 45 days to succeed.

Perhaps these success rates and times are expected. To me, they seem counterintuitive at best, character concept ruining at worst. The focus creation rules are presented as though you could reasonably expect to make your own foci if you build your character to be good at it. The realities of the mechanics involved make this far from the truth.

Lawl.

This is why every TTRPG needs a Statistics Guy.

Why would a talismonger be running?? If you are building a character to be a specialist a creating foci, why would you be running when you know that each foci will require (formula force)days to complete? I guess I am looking at characters who have the time to run and crafting, ehh... nice sideline when/if I have time. The above is also why foci and the like cost so much to buy.

Then why bother with rules for crafting foci? That's the main problem, here. The rules are in the core book, right next to the rules for casting spells and using adept powers. A new player is going to read these rules, think "Oh, I can be Magician who specializes in Enchanting", and end up with a character who can't do the very thing he's supposed to be good at. If the intent behind the focus creation rules was to make crafting foci so difficult that it's best left to NPCs, they shouldn't have included them in the core rules. That kind of thing is perfect for a supplement, along with an appropriate disclaimer to warn off players from investing in it.

Where I think you are going wrong is that you are trying to dictate the force of the foci you are making. If you are doing that, then you need to plan for it and use a higher rated formula. In addition, on pg. 306 it states:


If you are trying to make a for 6 focus with a force 6 formula, you have to hope that the focus gets no hits at all on the craft test. And those are pretty low odds. But even with your specialist example above, you are going to end up with a force 2 focus on average every time (15 dice for you = 5 avg hits; 9 dice for the focus on avg = 3 hits).

But it looks like you are complaining that a newly created character specifically designed to craft foci cannot create a force 6 focus and I would have to reply, you're damn straight! As is stated, artificing is not for the weak or untrained! Get your artificing, and magic up and use higher force formula so that you can increase the limit and you should be good.

Your specialist that has initiated and has a magic of 18 and an artificing of 15 would get a force 7 focus on average every time if they upped the force of the formula to an 11 instead of a 6.

Can you not expend reagents to increase your Limit (or reduce the Foci's resistance)? If that was the case, it would not be bad.

You need to spend an equal amount to the maximum possible binding cost (i.e. a [formula rating]-focus of the type you are crafting) in drams of reagents. But no other benefits are mentioned. Those reagents are always spent, whether you complete the focus (i.e. spend karma on it) or not.

One possible solution would be using teamwork and other DP-boosts (specialised tools etc.) to create reasonable foci without being an uber-mage.

Well that sucks...

Read my last example again. Your numbers are inaccurate. You're also misrepresenting my position by claiming that I am "complaining that a newly created character ... cannot create a force 6 focus." This is untrue. I provided benchmarks for three different characters attempting the same tasks, and discussed the results. The salient point is that none of those characters has a reasonable chance of success, which is not intuitive from reading the rules.

Demonstrating once again why having people to who got freaked out by the idea of taking "probability and statistics for dummies" in charge of your game design process doesn't work out well.

I'm slightly more disappointed that Disenchanting a focus doesn't get you some reasonable benefit. At best it takes a huge amount of time and gives you a paltry number of free reagents, but not so many that you couldn't easily sell the focus for a single percent of its value and buy up many, many more reagents.

If you could channel the energy into the creation of a new focus, or at least get several dozen reagents for your trouble, I could see it, but for now it looks like time not well spent.

In SR3, making foci was a long and arduous process depending on what you wanted to make. In SR4 I assume it was similar. In SR5 its designed to look like its possible for a runner to do it themselves without taking 54 years to do it. Got some extra cash and downtime of a week? Whip up that Focus whose formula you just bought from the talismonger (or created last month). Its only Force 3, so you only need 3 days off. You can handle that. If bug spirits invade your teammate's safehouse, he can deal with it for 3 days on his own, right?

But the actual rules are something else. You say that Seidaku is complaining that he can't make a Force 6 foci at character generation.

But its not just that.

Depending on how your GM handles it, you can't make a Force 1 Foci at character generation using a Force 1 formula. Why? Because to do this you're rolling against a pool of (atleast) 4 dice, which is probably going to get that 1 hit to negate your limited 1 hit. You're going to have to make plans for a higher force. 2 might do it, ubt you're hoping for a poor roll. 3 might be better.

And this is for something that's a piece of carved driftwood.

Want something with the level of complexity of say, a brick? Maybe a piece of leather? OR of 6. Want a rating 2 focus? Well, that pieces of leather can autobuy 2 successes (2+6), so don't bother with a Force 2 formula. Force 3 formula? That puts its dice pool at 9, so on average its going to roll 3 successes, so that's no good. Force 4 formula? 10 pool, still going to get on average 3 successes. Force 5 formula? 11 dice. Going to get 3 successes on average. Congrats. You made your force 2 focus. With a rating 5 formula. And that's only if the dice rolled slightly below average (and if you rolled 5 hits).

So to make your Force 2 Weapon Focus (Brick), you're looking at having to create a Force 5 Formula for it, and hope that you roll well enough to get 5 hits (don't forget, edge can't be used), and hope that the opposed test rolls slightly below average.

So it seems incredibly random to me.

Fortunately you can break down foci and recoup some of your reagent loss (not much, 1/3rd) and try again, but keep in mind that each time you try to create a foci, you run the risk of critical glitching, and losing an entire point of ESSENCE.

I had missed that reagents could set up a temporary lodge, but its still pretty time consuming. The Search function close to sunrise/sunset was about the only thing I could come up with as well.

Slightly better than I thought, but still sort of in the "Well. I could learn to summon a watcher. Or I could learn a new spell, or fund a good chunk of my next initiation or my next foci, or skill boost, or attribute boost..." category. Nice, but most likely way down on the list.

So, just to clarify a bit... Now, in SR5, Object resistance is rolled in opposition, rather than it being a Threshold? Not really sure I like that either. Way too much swing in the results. Sheesh.

Watchers have gotten less and less useful since 3rd. 3rd they were OMFGyes useful.

Their Search power was different than other spirits. In that it always succeeded, without fail. The determining factor was time. The only way for a watcher to fail to find something was if the time duration was greater than its remaining summon duration.

Other spirits had to roll dice and would (more often than not) just fail completely.

as some have suggested, perhaps teamwork is the solution. each assistant who gets at least one hit on a test will add 1 to your limit. note that while there is a limit to how many dice can be added, there is no actual limit to how much your limit can increase (although at some point, extra assistants won't really provide meaningful assistance since you won't have the dice pool to benefit from it).

but anyways, that does change things dramatically. you can now start with a force 1 recipe, have 9-10 assistants, and reasonably expect a force 6 focus if your dice pool cooperates.

(mind you, it does say something in terms of usefulness to the PCs that i'm suggesting you have more assistants than the size of the typical shadowrunning team).

Actually no, if you reread my post it state "it looks like" meaning that is the way I read it. If it was not meant that way, then I misinterpreted it. Also if you think about it for a second, it would be improbable for anyone to assume that you can create a force X focus from a like force formula due to the fact that the formula force is the limit. You would need to get the max number of successes and have the focus get no successes at all for it to happen. A very slim chance for that to happen no matter what the experience of the character.

Please show me where my numbers are inaccurate. And carefully note that I state "on average" for everything. The average number of time you will get a 5 or 6 on a d6 is 1 in 3 or 1/3. So if I am rolling 3 dice, on average 1 of those dice will be a 5 or a 6. That is what I did for everything. Yes, I know that "on average" is never average and that some nights you can't miss and other nights you can't get 3 hits out of 35 dice, but the average is the average.

Another thing brought up was breaking down the focus for 1/3 the reagents recoup, but why? Why not just sell it? Market is (force * 3k to 18k). So your force 2 power focus is worth 36k and you sell it for 25% to 50% and you still come out ahead (with the exception of time).

Guys, this is really bad. The changes to Foci-building and Rituals is the last straw for me. I got the PDF for the rulebook, but I'm not going to be investing anything else into SR5 unless they do a complete rewrite. These aren't issues that can be errata'd. Nothing short of a major rewrite will fix all of the issues across all the different mechanics. Guess I'll wait for SR5.5. For now, I might just houserule SR4 thusly:

• Change drain to Force instead of Force/2.
• Direct combat spells do NetHits for damage instead of Force + NetHits.
• Nerf spirit Edge somehow.

With that, I've got everything from SR5 that I actually like as far as the magic rules are concerned.

I was reading that at first too. But the limit-increase isn't for the final test itself, but for the team-leaders roll to increase the DP for the final test by the number of successes. Better than nothing, but you still need a higher formula than the desired focus-rating.



If you change the drain to force, don't forget the modfiers (for example -3 for a single target combat spell, -1 for an area -effect one).

Here's my shot at house rules for Artificing. PEACH! (Please Evaluate And Critique Honestly)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1s3xwI3d...dit?usp=sharing

I was trying for something that was more predictable, less punitive (I mean, Essence loss, really?), and that provides a PC who invests in it a nice discount on focus prices at the cost of large amounts of time. I do not expect that PC will ever actually exist, mind.

I included a little analysis to see if an NPC who makes foci could actually make a nice living. I mean, it's 12-hour days, but the money is good. Plus there is a house rule in there about harvesting reagents, again with some economic analysis.

after all assistants have rolled, and potentially added to the leader's dice and limit, the leader attempts to perform the actual test.

there is no test by the leader to see how well the leader was assisted by the assistance. the leader only makes one test, and that test is the test to perform whatever task everyone was working together on. for the limit to apply to any other test, particularly one that never actually occurs, would be completely nonsensical.

On 1 you'd still have to reduce drain by ~3 points.

F/2-1 for something like Stunbolt ended up as F-4 in SR5. It wasn't a strait "Oh, they changed F/2 to F."

I haven't calculated it, but it might become cheaper to buy a virgin telesma, than to do with an (initially cheaper) mundane telesma, due to the high demand of reagents per day (9000¥ worth of reagent for a power-focus per day).

Also did you consider the reduced follow-up rolls during extended tests (-1 cumulative die for each roll after the first). With an OR of 6 (mundane telesma) and a force 4 power focus (24 karma to bind) that's a threshold of 144. A threshold of 30+ is listed as extreme. Maybe apply the OR to the interval instead of the threshold.


My bad, somehow I got it right at first and then thought I got it wrong on my second (but still rushed) reading.

You don't spend reagents during telesma preparation, only during focus crafting. The higher OR was supposed to just make the telesma preparation step take longer and produce more drain (but see below).

Dorp! Forgot about that. Gonna have to fix that then. I wanted there to be little bits of drain throughout the day, rather than one big drain at the end of each day.

I'll think about that some more tonight and ping here when I've fixed it.

EDIT: House rules doc has been updated.

Was thinking about this the other day, since I had considered making a character who worked at as a minor talismonger as her "legitimate" cover. The only thing I could come up with that seemed to help with the limit on the final focus creation test was the "Special Work Area" lifestyle option (page 374). Unless you're not allowed to use that for magical crafting? Of course, that would introduce its own problems, as you could then hypothetically make a focus with force two greater than the formula. Not sure what the authors intended here.

Well said. This is like crap icing on shit cake. Enough. Between this and the always connected matrix rules for cyber, the accuracy bonuses instead of +dice bonuses for smartlinks, the (IMO) horrible priority system for character creation, the revamp to the combat actions, the rather ramshackle proofing of the book... jsut enough. I, too, bought the PDF to see the new rules. I was intrigued by a lot of things mentioned prior to the release. I liked the idea of accuracy. Still do. But it's implementation sucketh. It turns out that the only thing I actually think is an improvement over 4th is the "new" (retro 3rd edition) Initiative system. And I already fixed the one I didn't like as well in my 4th games.

SR5 is full of great ideas and decent intentions. But, I really feel the core design team dropped the ball... massively. To me, these rules seem barely playable and I can't see anything but frustration coming from my players if I switch. I have issues with SR4, but they were all fixable easily enough. I definitely wasn't fond of a few things that came in the expansions and didn't really like some of the changes made going to SR4A. But the core of the game was completely playable with jsut a few tweaks on my part as GM. The game stands on it's own. I can enter into ANY game and play a stock character and play by the stock rules and have a blast. Not so with SR5. I am beginning to feel like I need to take half the book and the common elements of the system (combat, character generation, etc) and completely revise them. That is NOT a good game. I might as well have re-written 4th on my own if I have to put that much efffort into it.

This doesn't even address the opinion I hear frequently on this board from the supporters of the new system: "Change it for your home game. There's no SR police coming to your door." That's fine if i want to play solely home games. But if I want to play Missions, if I want to play SR games at conventions, I am completely stuck with these poorly thought out rules. They will be excluding me from the SR community (provided it survives the edition change.) That is not fun. I have been playing SR for over 15 years, played in many tournaments, played in many one-offs at conventions. ran my own games at conventions and figure I am personally responsible for bringing maybe 20-25 people to SR versions 3 and 4 and all the books, etc. those people purchased Not to mention myself owning nearly every SR book produced from FASA, Fanpro and Catalyst. After buying the PDF of 5th edition, I can sadly say I won't be purchasing anything else for SR as long as there IS a 5th edition.

I do want to say that my disappointment in the game itself is not a reflection of how I feel about the freelancers that worked on the system. I can tell from the many threads here, since release, that the game frequently did not go the direction they wanted it and they are rightfully proud of their individual work (as they should be!) I feel sorry for them as well, since they deserved something better for all their hard work.

Vlad

The focus creation rules aren't bad, they're just weird and a little counter-intuitive. To actually create a F6 power focus you need to have:

1) A F10 formula (27,000 nuyen -- reusable) and an OR3 telesma (~4 hits)
2) About 30 dice on the artificing test (~10 hits)
3) At worst 60 drams of reagents (1200 nuyen) per attempt
4) A F10 magical lodge (5000 nuyen -- reusable) -- a temporary lodge won't cut it since you'd have to spend too much time replacing it every day
5) A little luck
6) 6 Karma

Of course the focus is worth 108,000 nuyen, so the monetary outlay seems pretty low in comparison. It's the ridiculous amount of skill you need to craft such a thing that's the biggest investment.

Honestly you have to be about the best artificer in the known world to actually make a F6 focus. Considering 12 skill with an appropriate specialization you're still looking at Magic 16+ to be able to craft them semi-reliably.

I guess that's why their availability is 18R to 24R, making you have to be about the best negotiator in the known world to find one on the black market.

(Link for reference)
Looks reasonable, though the threshold of [Force] might be a bit much (on the other hand high-rating foci should indeed be rare).
Is the final crafting-step an extended test or just a chain of independent tests?

Disenchanting: You can get a "maximum of one third of the total drams of reagents needed to create the focus". Since the amount of drams depends on the amount of time it took the artificer to finish the focus, this limitation can't be reasonably calculated.

Reagent gathering: Did you intend a limit on how much a given area can be 'milked' for reagents? The core book has a 'cooldown' of 2 days per dram for an area of around a hectare (p.319-320). So for 250 drams/month you'd need a harvestable area of about (250*2/30) 17 hectares per reagent gatherer.

Just read through Artificing again and yep, as written it feels a bit... Odd. However there seems to be a failure to clarify some rules for intent in the writing. Apparently just like in SR3 the more you personally hand craft the object to be a Foci the easier it is to achieve. There's no actual rule for how that works but I'd go with (Crafting skill + stat [inherant limit] vs 2xObject Resistance <6hours>) net hits lower the targets object Resistence for the Artificing roll. Also I'd let Reagents be used to raise the Limit (max Force x 2, otherwise there's no point to the formulae).

So our chargen Mage with Magic 6 Enchanting 4 wants to make a Force 3 Foci. He also has the "Woodcarving" knowledge skill (professional category) at 4.

So he takes his natural hickory branch and then works with it himself for 10d6 vs 6d6 granting on average 1 net hit every 6hrs. He elects to spend 12hrs working on the wand. His 2 net hits reduce the OR by 2.

He then prepares the Reagents to make the Focus (required = Karasa cost to bond, min 3) and then spends 6 drams to set the Limit.

Now his enchanting roll is Magic + Enchanting (10) [limit 6] vs Force + modified OR (4). Granting on average 2net hits, so not quite the F3 he wanted but a working F2 foci none the less.

I made it a chain of independent tests. Unlike an extended test where you can take a rest in between, you are supposed to keep doing these tests every day until the focus is finished. I will clarify that in the document.


For any crafting days where the threshold wasn't met, those reagents are wasted, so they don't count towards the amount of reagents in the focus, which is always Force times the value in the table. I've clarified that in the document.


Ah, I just thought it was 1 hectare per gathering test, not 1 hectare per dram. I should probably reduce the "regen time" to 1 day per dram harvested since I doubled the drams you get. Doc updated!

Everything but spirits was nerfed for mages, so they will need to rely on them more than ever now.

It is 1 hectare per test, but the area needs (drams x2) days to 'recharge'.

I was just about to start a SR5 game, I happily purchased my shiny new SR5 pdf and eagerly read through the whole book. High hopes and everything... and then I read the Artificing... and
I registered on dumpshock to tell you... I am the Common Joe, who buys SR products since SR2ED, and only reads forums to find pitfalls before encountering them in middle of a gaming session.
And now I feel seriously let down with SR5 Core book, but this thread is about Artificing so let me be on topic.

Artificing is one of the obviously and seriously broken rules in SR5.
After reading it once together with my regular group and after a short discussion, we quickly came up with an example, how to collapse the Focus market...

A bit-over specialized character ( Artificing 6 (+2 Craft Power focus) + Magic 6 ) can easily brake the rules as written.

1) Let's set up a Force 1 Lodge
2) Let's create a Force 1 formula for the Power focus, it takes 1 day only and it's easily done.
3) Now let's create that Power Focus:
We are starting with a Force 1 formula, so no worries drams cost is based on the Force 1 formula (6)... so it is still cheap.
Let's spend a day as it only takes 1 day as per the original lvl.
Base test would be 14(1) vs 4, but our Mage is a clever guy...

So he sets up his the artificing room in his apartment (buy that 1k extra for that 2 limit increase) and calls over his 3 mage buddies (L4 contacts) for a day long enchantment party...
Four of them working together will make something, any writer could have seen a miles away...

2 talismonger contacts -> Enchantment 6 + Magic 4 + Edge 3-> 6(2)
A street mage contact -> Artificing 1 + Magic 6 + Edge 3 -> 1(1)

At the end it's 21(6)vs4... did I just created a lvl5 Power focus, on average... basically for the base karma cost?

Cost:
500 for the Lodge
1000 for the specialized work area
6 drams for the lvl 1 Power Focus formula -> 120 & 5 Karma for the sealing.
A day worth of work from 3 other mages, who were happy to help out a friend for a day.

Gain: A Power Focus 5 = 90k with normal availability: 20R
I don't even know what to say...

The extra hits from the specialized work area is kind of interesting, as is the teamwork. It might make it more possible perhaps.

Of course, it also looks like you could abuse it the other way as well

Another question.

Lets say my mage decides to wear a pair of glasses. Maybe they want thermal sometimes, maybe low light, whatever.

If I'm not using any enhancements at the time (such as thermal) then are the glasses still just...glass? Or is everything, including the normal view electronic in the first place, and thus I'd have to raise my glasses up each time I wanted to cast?

If you are not using the augments within the glasses to cast, then it should be no problem. Alas, It probably does not work that way, though.

What makes you say that?

Base rule: Artificing + Magic [formula Force] v. formula Force + telesma’s Object Resistance

It is always nice to find stuff on both sides of the equation, and limiting hits on one side only certainly makes stuff easier to get.


Base statistics for dp 24 vs 12 dice (FF 9 + OR 3), not counting the limit:
(Sorry for the ugly tables)



Next step: Capping at the limit (formula force 9)




Next step: For each number of hits, multiply P(Mage:number of hits) with P(focus: at least (desired force=6) hits less). Add those numbers up. 6 hits required, 9 hits max:


Odds of creating a Force 6+ Focus: 20%.


Next step: doing it over and over, or odds of having 1+ foci of force 6+ after N attempts


Any errors?


The underlying design (judged on nothing but the math) is that high force foci are truly special now. Look at the drain code of (Formula Force)+2*(Focus hits).

Edit: Epic Fail at adding up corrected.

Rampant Cynicism, I guess. Look at all the threads that popped up about that very thing in SR4A. Bound to crop up again in SR5.

See, I Always considered High End Foci to be special to start with. Why would I need an unfriendly/unworkable mechanic to reinforce that?

Within the new skill range of 1-12 the mechanic is workable. I don´t like the loss in competence on behalf of starting chars, yet that could easily be corrected for a campaign.

In this case the compensation is that lower rated foci are more useful - as long as background count is only a negative dp mod you suffer on all magic activities anyway.

Which is one of the things I hate about the new Background Count. It SHOULD affect Foci just as much as a Mage/Adept. I like that it is a double whammy in SR4A. BCG of 2, and you lose 2 magic, and all your foci lose 2 Magic as well. So, that Mage who relies upon his Foci can no longer rely upon them. If it is just a DP mod (like the proposed Errata in SR5), then that dynamic effectively goes away. I weep for the future.

My various characters use of magic is already ...watched. I´m afraid the group wouldn´t let me play the mage under SR5.