They differentiate clearly (IMHO) between Environment and Preferred Environment. There are only 2 Environments, Wilderness and Domain. Only 5% have a Preferred Environment of Jungle, sure, but any Wilderness Totem can (by our interpretation) have a lodge in a Jungle.

Sphynx

[Edit]Fixed Typos[/Edit]

If several characters attempted it, each managing to roll 180 dice for their Sorcery skill every 20 days, they would average about 3 years each to learn the spell. How long did it take your character?

Just a note that anything over the Force of 2 is illegal, and would require a permit to acquire legally.

I see what you're driving at, but the balance comes at chargen. The rigger/decker/sam I suggested could be easily made using Resources A, Skills B, and Attributes C. A mage would have to use at least one of those priorities on magic, thus taking a hit in other areas. So, he's spent an "order of magnitude" to get those abilities.

When covering all areas-- combat, intel, stealth, intrusions-- the super-versatile type would be at least equal to the mage for the most part. The mage does have some significant edges, but so does the rigger/sam. In intel, the mage will beat the cyberboy in anything astral; but anything technological, and the cyber will beat him hands down, every time. (Don't underestimate the information-gathering power of a decker.) In intrusions, the mage could have spells that will bypass cameras, but the techie will have the Electronics B/R skills to get the doors to open, and possibly even the ability to take control of a CCSS system. In stealth, the Improved Invisibility spell is quite powerful, but a rigger operating a stealth drone doesn't have nearly as much to worry him if he's caught.

And in combat, well... riggers are the 800-lb gorillas of Shadowrun combat. Not only can they control a small army of drones, but they'll be packing AV munitions as standard-issue. Trying to hurt a drone with magic is problematic at best; but hurting a mage with a Great Dragon ATGM is no problem at all.

While a mage can grow very powerful in Magic, if he chooses to grow in other areas, he won't advance any faster than anyone else would with the same amount of karma/cash. The mage needs karma to initiate, to raise skills and attributes, to bond foci, and possibly for an ally spirit. A mundane only needs karma to raise skills and attributes.

Also, don't forget about Drain. While a mage's spells are a powerful edge, it's the only such edge that carries a risk of being hurt for using it. True, mages with Centering and a high willpower will be able to soak most Drain, but if they're sustaining a lot of spells, it becomes much harder to pull off.

Realistically, I have a harder time controlling uber-sams and riggers than I do mages. Back in the days of 1st Ed, no matter what the opposition, a ripple of free-flight rockets would take it apart. If you want to limit mages, start enforcing the Background count rules more heavily-- as a battle progresses, the very violence and death of combat can easily cause a background count of 1.

So of course the first thing (he? she?) does is ask ...

One game year, almost exactly. The person who designed it for me was killing themself laughing by the end of it - we half-roleplayed the interval rolls. At least that time I wasn't learning it under SR2 rules with a Magic Theory of 2 ...

How many people here use the Rule of 1? I'm asking because there seem to be quite a few people suggesting Force 1 spells. Every group I ever played in learned very quickly never to do that.

Of course! You were just inviting it, weren't you?

Regarding Force 1 spells, perhaps you're neglecting that a spellcaster rolls his/her Sorcery Skill to cast a spell, not the Force of the spell. The Rule of 1 rarely comes into play with a decent Sorcery skill. The Force affects not how many dice you roll, but typically either a limit on how beneficial the results might be or the TN for the resistance roll of the target(s).

Actually, I seem to remember canon references to elementals sometimes following the letter of commands rather than the spirit, in apparently intelligent attempts to harm the conjurer within the bounds of their TOS. Not quite sure where, though.

Sweet jebus are you right. We recently had a rigger (our first ever really) roll out Steel Lynx (? not sure if that's the name) drone, which proceded to kick the crap out of all all opposition. Mages, for all my bitching, are pretty easy to balance in a game: Step-up nuyen and magical opposition, cut down on karma, and change the cost of learning new spells (say, 2x force instead of force)... but Riggers....

Someone with more experience tell me, how do you deal with riggers dominating combat? I'm sure there are downsides and things to exploit against them, not sure what those are however.



Curugul

Actually, the mages in the campaign I was playing in had very little trouble with them. They were, of course, all shamans. Summon nature spirit, spirit uses Accident power on drone, drone goes crashing into a nearby accident and gets wrecked quite quickly....

The powerball's not even as effective as the grenade. It won't affect anything the mage can't see, and even worse, anything and everything the spell does affect is going to have the mage's astral fingerprints all over it.

... although not intentionally.

Re Sorcery skill - did take that into account. Then again, most of the Awakened types in our games (except elemental and sorcery adepts) traditionally did not start with Sorcery 6. On average, those adepts tended to be much more powerful than the full magicians! Like motorfirebox says, it's always a tradeoff. Advantages and disadvantages to all things, yes?

Glyph: that's one that was directly cited in our group, but it was before I owned the books, so I never knew it was from printed shadowtalk. I'm more canon-familiar with Person 404's "letter of the command", but I couldn't point to that in the books just now either.

Another quick point of comparison:

Ares Predator: 9M damage, 450 ¥ for the pistol, 2 ¥ per standard round, 2/24 hours
Manabolt Force 9: 9M damage, 5M drain, 4500 ¥ for the spell formula (edit: corrected to 900 ¥ for a maximum M drain spell), 9/72 hours

And I'll definitely agree that riggers can become absolutely grotesque, very quickly ... although still not unbalanced: they have a very specific function within the team, and can frequently be limited when stepping outside that function. Still, it's the GM's job to limit available Steel Lynxes

You're comparing a force 9 Manabolt to a heavy pistol?

ROFL.



Curugul

The problem is that it's not a 'maximum M Force spell'. Combat spells can be cast any any damage level the caster chooses at the time of casting.

Grenades get more deadly if you allow them to stage themselves via the optional rules in SR3 (which I do), and even moreso if you use overdamage rules (which I do). The average grenade will stage into one-over-deadly against anyone with body under 7, and they have the potential to get much higher. This is just dealing with the standard cheapo ones, too, not IPE or the like. Due to the weirdness of the shadowrun damage rules, even a 1 one-over-deadly attack is pretty dangerous.

*shrug* Six of one, half a dozen of the other. Whether you use skill or 1/2 Power to stage, it's generally going to be a wash on average. In a chunky salsa situation, the optional staging rules will work out better. Otherwise, you're going to get better results using skill + combat pool.

And if they can see a mage casting, I think it's appropriate for the characters to try a Dodge test of some sort to try and get out of sight, or at least behind some cover.

Guns can be traced by fingerprints and ballistics. But if a mage takes a few minutes to clean up his astral signature, then there is almost no evidence of the crime.

Now, the heavy pistol is a fine weapon, and can be extremely effective in many circumstances, but manabolt still usually has a better one-shot takedown capability (along with a lot of downsides, of course). But manabolt is the top of the line, spell-wise (although there are a few times where a damaging manipulation will work better). I would rather compare it to an Ares Alpha. Both of them can take down most targets if the attacker sacrifices a lot of dice pool to do so.

They can be, sure. But in a world where heavy pistols are throwaway items as they are in SR, one can easily afford to toss it in the river or the harbor every time you use it. Also, astral signatures are unique to the individual casting the spell. Guns are not.

In a few minutes, a mage is going to have bigger problems than an astral signature. Problems like high-threat response teams automatically called in by the wrist monitor on the dead guard.

Corps have their own HTR teams, dude. And in a world like SR, a guard's sudden death will likely warrant one.

Not to derail the thread, but...

I would imagine that this kind of biomonitor well...monitoring would be relatively commonplace.

What if you get a heart attack and can't activate your DocWagon card? What if you pass out and never realize what's going on? That's reason enough for the average joe to have one wired to a transmitter, especially if they have some sort of medical condition that makes one prone to attacks or seizures or something else equally life-threatening.

Besides the biomonitor making sure your rent-a-guard isn't asleep on his or her post, it's also an early warning mechanism for a "something's up...Bob's heart monitor just flat-lined..."

Of course, this would require some sort of internal signal receiver to ensure that Bob didn't just walk into a weak signal area and registered as asleep, dead or off-line. Which means another bit of security to crack before penetrating the site.

-Siege