how are you doing similar damage to yourself to harm them? what force are you casting your direct combat spells at, exactly, that you can't soak the drain on a spell that realistically has no business going above a force of about 5-6 unless you have a truly ridiculous amount of karma under your belt to actually need the higher limit?

and the main problem with magicians is that, right out of chargen, they can have all of the dice pool they need to be effective. from the very instant they're created. oh, they can get better at it, but that's just gravy. you can start off with a powerful focus, your key skills at a high value (perhaps not every one maxed out that you'd like, but that's everyone), and an excellent magic attribute. where this becomes a problem is just how much of that immediately becomes applicable to any new spell they acquire.

a combat magician might throw 16-18 dice on combat spells... and probably throws 14-16 dice on every other type of spell, also. which means that the mage focused heavily on combat needs to spend only 5 karma to pick up influence and is suddenly as useful as a powerful face as well in many circumstances, while the street samurai needs to invest in a completely different attribute from the main focus and pick up half a dozen skills to accomplish the same feat. *that* is where the power comes in. a simple 5 karma investment takes you from 0% effectiveness in many fields to being close to as good as an expert in those fields. magicians have bad initiative? 5 karma later, your magician can actually have pretty good initiative, all it takes is learning the right spell and using it. your perception is not so good? 5 karma later you can spot enemies from hundreds of meters away through walls or when they're blending in with a crowd.

whatever you do as a magician, it is very likely that by simply spending an additional 5 karma, a sizable portion of the investment you made towards doing your main focus can be applied to a secondary focus. this is less of a problem for adepts, i'll admit (in fact, i'm quite happy with the current situation between pure adepts and pure street samurai, although augmented adepts i think may pose a slight problem in being able to make better use of all available resources... but overall, it's close enough that you're not losing a lot generally speaking between choosing one route or the other).

it works out to be not too bad in chargen, because the current increased cost of that core (magic + spellcasting is generally more expensive to get high in chargen than agility + pistols or automatics) combined with a limit to your maximum number of spells at chargen keeps things fairly even. there's a high core cost combined with, for lack of a better way to describe it, a low cost for add-on modules, and in chargen with a fixed amount of available resources it isn't too big of a deal. but when you extend that out, the ability to quickly add on more and more modules means that your core, which was previously designed to be expensive enough to balance out those low-cost modules, can now be applied to far more modules, and the cost suddenly becomes comparatively a lot lower.

To be fair, influence is shit for anything but the absolute shortest of cons. Often stuff where the street sam could have achieved the same result by knocking the guy out.

different range, different defences, and if the suggestion is subtle enough the target (as well as everyone around the target) may never even realize anything unusual ever happened. [sarcasm] oh yeah, clearly interchangeable. [/sarcasm]

there's a lot of difference between persuading the guard that he doesn't need to give you that annoying random in-depth check on your credentials on a busy day, and punching him out right in front of anyone who happens to be looking at all, such as a fellow guard at the same checkpoint.

edit: and even if there wasn't much of a difference in usefulness, that's still 5 karma for the magician vs what the street sam is investing into strength to deal enough damage to KO the target plus the unarmed skill needed to reliably succeed at the task (we'll assume the agility is part of the street sam's core ability, which i suspect most people consider to be shooting people).

And you better hope that no one (target included) manages to make the perception test to notice your casting, as their resistance rolls would end the spell prematurely. And given that it's opposed by two attributes, it's gonna take a few hits to be successful.

Spells aren't THAT subtle, and Influence is more limited than you seem to think.

That depends on what one considers "effective," but it's an interesting comparison thought prompt.

A mage can sling 16 dice* for a single target elemental attack at force 6, every round, and never take drain (unless the GM is being pissy and refuses to allow buying hits on a drain test). The defender gets a Rea+Int test, add four dice for good cover (full cover is a lot more complicated, so I'll leave to someone else) which means, assuming a high average attribute of 4, that's 16 dice to 12 and the mage has a good chance to hit. However if the defender has a good Wil and goes defensive, if there are heavy uncompensated vision modifiers (note: you can now use electronic vision mods with indirect spells to help ameliorate that), or the target has decent counterspelling assistance, there's a very good chance of missing altogether. Assuming the ubiquitous armor jacket and you're looking at maybe 7 damage vs 10 dice to soak for maybe 4 damage a round against my expectation of a decent security mook.

I've always tended to lean towards the Ares Alpha (DV 11, AP -6 (APDS)) for my gun of choice ever since it was introduced. A good sammie can hit 18, maybe 20, dice to shoot and recoil compensation can easily clear 6 to allow recoilless Burst Fire. I'll use the same defense actions as above, but burst fire gives -2 dice to the defending roll. The Alpha also has to worry about range modifiers, which the spell doesn't, but a traditional shadowrun is far more CQB than battlefield engagements, so I'd leave range at short. So 18 dice to 10 dice to dodge. Expect 3 roughly net successes, so 14 DV against 10 dice to soak. So maybe 11 damage every round against that same security mook. Then again, if you're using an Alpha in SR5, you're more likely to abuse suppressive fire+grenades for maximum carnage.

Maybe something a little more everyday, so I'll go through the same thought process for a Steyr TMP. It is the most concealable FA gun and thus good for an everyday side arm in situations you can't walk around with your Alpha hanging out. So, DV 7, -4 AP (APDS again), and with a 4 Str and a Gas Vent 3, you hit the magic recoil compensation number again for burst fire. So 16 dice (since using the same sammie that spec'ed in the Alpha- two less dice) against that same security mook, under the same conditions gets maybe two net successes for 9 DV against 12 dice to soak. Maybe 5 damage every round. Similar damage to the spell but less likely to miss and the sammie has a lot more simple actions for positioning/reloads/communication/etc. Given a mage could also let lose a spirit before starting with the combat spells, I'd declare it "close enough."

Back of the envelope math for Pistols shows an expected 6 damage a round for a Ruger, but with a higher likelihood of missing without that mod from burst fire. Hrm, again in a similar ball park to spells, but just barely.

However when doing the same thing with a sniper rifle, the Desert Strike (available at chargen) averages roughly 11 damage every turn but is more likely to miss than the assault rifle. Also they have obvious range of engagement issues (I don't care if there's no rules against it, no one should take a sniper rifle into a CQB unless it has a bayonet). Shotguns... I've already done too much math in my head to deal with flechette, so, using the Enfield AS-7 (which you can finagle to shoot BF every round as well), I can expect roughly 12 damage every round. Both are similar to the Alpha (if not cheesing suppressive fire+grenades). Hrm.

Okay, so there is a definite divide in killing potential: Assault Rifles and Long Arms can reliably put down one decent security mook on most initiative passes, and everything else is maybe half as effective. I can see that as being some form of intentional balance if the game is under the assumption that carrying around a rifle of some sort will grab the attention of everyone around you but things like carrying a pistol are more socially acceptable. Dunno if that's intentional, and I don't know if I like a force 6 magic spell being less effective than a pistol. I might nix the ability to take good or partial cover against spells and the ability to use full defense against spells under the rationalization that if you can see them, you can hit them (vision mods would apply as normal and taking full cover prevents casting at all). It'd make a dedicated combat mage very likely to hit without counterspelling back up (which I'd like as it helps push the whole teamwork thing) but they won't hit hard hard enough to one shot anyone unless they push the force relatively high and gamble with a lot of physical drain on the line.

Thanks for the thought prompt Lurker.

*The power focus is really nice, but I have a hard time putting Resources higher than E.

While you have something of a point, this specifically makes me recall a player I used to game with, who kinda thought like you, in that magicians were awesomesauce on toast. He believed could just buff himself to be better than any other PC, just by adding the right spell.

Because he relied on this spell for initiative, he, ironically, almost never got to do anything in combat. This was in 3rd (but would have been even worse in 4th), but he couldn't roll high enough to get two passes without that spell. On the first combat turn, he'd have to cast that spell, and by the time it came around to roll initiative again, the actual sammie had gone so many times already, that combat was mostly a forgone conclusion. Then he attempted to always have it up, so he didn't have to waste his first turn while the sammie was doing everything.

This worked out in the normal world when having to deal with random gangers and that sort, but, at least in our game, wards are the cheapest magic security available. Most every business north of a Stuffer Shack has at least a ward across it's doorway, set to a contact security if it breaks. Yes he could break it easily, but doing so would alert security when all he wanted was to get his drink on at the club. So he got in the habit of dumping it and recasting once through. This habit then actually knocked him out in the middle of a run and he almost always had a penalty due to the accumulated drain. He still persisted, over the griping of the rest of the team, until he figured out that he also gave away the team twice on an infiltration mission when a watcher spirit spotted an active magical aura and reported the aura's position.

He got so pissed that his "unbeatable" plan to be more awesome than any other PC didn't work out, that he yelled at the GM and that was the last session he came back for. The next session the group elected to have his character jump on a grenade to heroically save the rest of us, and the GM's response was classic... "at least he's finally useful."

This strikes me as the same kind of GM dickery as this D&D game I was not in:

A friend of mine built a barbarianish character who picked up sunder feats galore. I don't remember the exact nature of how he got to the "cool aid man through walls" but he could. Charging may have been involved. I recall that someone heavily focused on Bull Rush.

PCs wander into a tiny little hamlet in the middle of nowhere, are immediately assaulted by a pair of Immovable Monks. As in, "immune to bull rush" kind of immovable. That dealt with, they get to the buildings proper. "I walk through the wall of the nearest building and pester the locals about what's going on." (Because low int and the ability to ignore concrete make for amusing situations). GM: "Oh, you can't. The wall has a wall of force on it. So does every other wall on every other building."

Later they get into a tower were the plot is going on and rather than fight monsters to get to the stairs the player tries his walk-through-walls ability again, this time on the ceiling. Nope, wall of force. Ditto the floor.

You mean set to alert the creator who then contacts security?
Might be a working business model, but considering what you're paying these days for the IT equivalent - and magic being somewhat rare - I could see that bankrupting businesses soon. Plus there being trust/diligence issues.

I'm not sure if there's a maximum on the number of wards a single mage can create, if so that would certainly be a factor (if someone can point me to the rule i's be grateful, btw.).

Also, a FAIR GM would probably have advised said player, that aura masking allows to pass wards undetected via an opposed test.

And yet, any Additional Dice from Couterspelling reduces your "amazing" success of less damage than a pistol to possibly nothing. Which seems to be discounted in these discussions.

Let me show you a magic trick Mom showed me when you weren't around.

You mean ONCE the Infiltrator has actually Assensed the Aura of the Ward's Creator. Can't pass a Ward using Masking without that particular bit of information.

There is no upper limitation as such, but setting up wards takes time and area they cover isnt that large. It is 50 cubic meter times the sum of magic rating of participants of the ritual.

Lest say Wally the Wagemage sets up a ward. It is his main job so lets say 4 magic + 4 skill + specialization 2 + (corp loaned) focus 2 = 12 die pool. Willpower of 4 and drainstat 4.
Lodge is needed so he sets up temporary one. Rating 4, taking Force hours and 4 drams of reagents. Then lunchbreak and he starts casting. Ward ritual takes Force hours and Force drams of reagents, he chooses Force equal to his Magic. After 4 hours he rolls 12 die with Force as limit vs 2xForce.
12 vs 8, 4 vs 2.66 hits on average. He takes 2x2.66 = 5.33 drain. Ouch. The ward covers 50*4 = 200 cubic meters and lasts net hit weeks, 1.33 in this case. Assuming 2.5 m room height that is 80 square meters of space. For a business place that is not that much.
Wally sleeps of the drain and continues on the following day until the whole area is covered. After about a week he has to start over.

Lets look at a better case. Long term contract so there is permanent lodge in the building. Wally also has Molly the Mage and Casey the Caster to help him. Neither of them is that experienced yet so Magic and Skill 3 for both.

No time or reagents needed for setting up lodge, so much time is saved each time. Molly and Casey do teamwork tests, average 2 net hits each which conveniently is equal to Wallys skill and the max amount of help he can get. Now he rolls 12 + 2 + 2 = 16 dice with limit of Force + 2 + 2 = 8 and ward rolls 8 as before. 5.33 vs 2.66 hits = 2.66 net hits. All participants resist same drain as before.
Now the ward covers (4+3+3)*50 =500 cubic meters or 200 square meters with 2.5 room height. 2 hours to sleep of drain, with Body of 3 that is on average 2.33 for Wally and 2.00 for the rest per hour. Enough to remove wound penalties. Then they do it again for different part of shop for another 200 square meters. Now it takes twice the amount of time before they have to start over.

I used lowish stats because I feel that regular Joe Averages have lower stats than runners and they arent that much of a specialists or in game terms not that optimized.

Well, since fooling the ward is obviously possible and since it won't stop something non magic, i would simply mask as mundane .

Does not work that way, unfortunately. Your Magical Aura is still there, just masked, and the Ward will pick it up unless it is masked as the Ward's Creator or someone who has authorization to pass the ward. You neeed to Mask using that Signature.

As an aside, that's not a GM being pissy, that's a GM being literate - Drain tests certainly fall under the "if there is a change of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions" clause. And really, buying hits on resistance tests is not a reasonable thing to expect in Shadowrun, where part of the POINT is that you can always come up empty, and thus a light pistol can take you down no matter how much armour you put on.

Indeed... I have never seen anyone allow the Buying of Hits for any type of Resistance test... whether it be Drain or Damage.

Maybe, maybe not. It really depends on the situation.

You'd need to play more with a wider group of people then. I have seen hits be allowed to be bought for Drain and Damage.

Well, help me out here, because I really can't think of one where it should be allowed.

While I can't see allowing it in any sort of remotely dangerous situation, letting someone buy off the drain for casting a F1 Magic Fingers to grab another beer, or any other trivial use of low force spells in a totally non-threatened situation. On a run, I'd be surprised to see it allowed.

Why would I want to play with a wider array of people, just to watch them do something the system strongly suggests against. Makes no sense.

mana barriers such as wards can now be bypassed fresh out of chargen, no initiation required. it's not by any means guaranteed, but it's possible, and if done right will not alert anyone (magic + charisma vs barrier force x 2 [astral] is the test... each net hit lets you bring one extra thing through with you. failure means you don't break through, but no mention is made of alerting the creator whether you succeed or not (glitches and critical glitches would presumably change that, of course).

as to the watchers noticing the active spells, i'd point out that there's a decent chance the watcher should have reported the presence of *anyone* in the area regardless, active spells or not.

Hmmmmm... Missed that one.

Agreed... But who Watches the Watchers?

The crucial part is the "might significantly change the course of the game's actions". My experience is based on SR4, so it may not be strictly appropriate for SR5, but I think it may be relevant. In scenario where it didn't matter might be that the mage knocked himself out casting a spell because the GM had planned to allow the PCs a long rest period afterwards anyway.

No, it wasn't. I was playing the other mage in the campaign. The practice of warding was generally accepted by both me and the GM and most runs for my character started with an astral jaunt over to the target to pick out where the wards were, and unless we were trying to break into mitsuhama, it was usually only the obvious entrances that were warded. This encouraged the party making creative plans- something we actually enjoyed. More than once I told the other player to just jump through a window rather than walking through the front door or other obvious entrance.

But when we did go up against the equivalent of a zero zone? Yes there were nested wards around all the super sensitive areas, so much so that I tried to avoid elevator shafts if at all possible, but for our table, paranoid security just comes with the territory of a zero zone, and not random walls specifically enchanted against a specific PC.

So, yeah, no, nothing like that D&D game.
Yeah- it was the magical version of raising an alarm. It didn't automatically hose the run- it just changed the dynamics and presented different conflicts.
As the player of the other mage, I tried to tell him this, but he was utterly convinced that magic had no counters and was totally OP.
It was also 3rd edition, which didn't require a lodge (or any special materials), anyone who could astrally assense could put up a ward, it cost 100 Nuyen per hour, 1 hour per level of force of the ward, covered an area of Magic times 50 cubic meters, and lasted weeks equal to the number of successes on a Magic test. Under those conditions? Wards would be everywhere.
On 13 dice (elf shaman), against 3 drain, there's a ~0.2% chance of rolling a critical glitch, and a ~14% of not getting at least three successes and only a ~0.5% chance to not get any successes and suffer the grave penalty of a -1 die to all actions.

"So, what you're telling me is I have a chance!"

The POINT, of Shadowrun or any other RPG, is to have fun. We don't find meaningless dice rolling to be fun, therefore we don't roll unless that particular roll of the dice will have a meaningful impact upon the game. In Shadowrun, that usually means if you can buy all the hits you need, do it and get on with the story. You may like rolling lots of dice for every little thing. I don't. /shrug
Hi. I'm tjn. Now you have. Nice to meet you.
The system doesn't "strongly" suggest anything other than the GM is god and the puny players should feel lucky to even be in his game and accept his word as law.
The passage reads that "Buying hits often should not be done if there is a chance of a glitch or critical glitch that might significantly change the course of the game's actions."
Should not = Permissive either way, but the bias is against it under the subsequent conditions
If there is a chance of glitch or critical glitch = a strict reading would mean you always roll, because there's always a chance, even if it's insignificant, however if that was the case, they would have never put the passage in the game, so the word chance is meant in a colloquial and not literal sense. For me, once you get above 9 dice, critical glitches are too remote of a chance to be significant and thus I'd allow the buying of hits. Tastes vary.
Might significantly change the course of the game's actions = Any downtime or otherwise non-stressful situation automatically gets a free pass to buy hits.

My ruling would be that a player could buy hits on any non-contested roll, when in a non-stressful situation, or, if in a stressful situation, they had 9 or more dice after modifiers. I really don't see that as being unreasonable, but every table's different. Again, /shrug.

And another guy that really thinks somebody will believe that "the spell makes 1 time 3P (without armor) damage while everybody else is making 8-12P (with so much AP that is equals no armor) damage 3 times, but i want to make you believe that this is good, if i just repeat it often enough". ^^

Yes this is called pressing through the ward and in past editions it has ALWAYS set off the wards alarm functions whether you were successful or not at going through.

As you point out the current rulebook is SILENT on this. I heavily suspect this is yet another mistake that slipped into the rulebook along with the rest of the humongous errata thread. Looks like another comment for the SR5 errata thread.

Logically this would make all wards pretty much useless using your description. Because I could simply press against the ward until I went through... it might take me 3 or 5 tries... but the dice mechanics are such that I'll go through undetected if your reading is correct. There would be zero need for any advanced methods such as masking as the wards creator.


Also, I've played in groups that allowed 4:1 on drain and it ranks among the most broken things you can allow a magician to do in game. Normal dice odds for 4:1 are nearly that roll a d4... on a 1 you take 1 or more drain. The chance of drain at the 4:1 limit is actually quite significant. Allowing the mage a 'safe' drain level he can always use results in no risk force levels for many spells which then get spammed. I heavily recommend to never allow a 4:1 drain check on your mages. (I say this playing primarily mages in most games... go figure I pick the char last and no one else makes magical support... so I fill the gap).


Anyhow going full circle... why should I waste my time on a direct combat spell which at most is going to annoy the target when I can instead use control thoughts... and take him out of the fight? Yes he can fight using his actions to reduce but remember the force of the control thoughts is subtracted from his wil+log dice pool. So a force 6 casting will take out the average chars ability to resist (3wil 3log).

Magic all around got a heavy nerfing... everything is resisted with two stats now. So starting with 12 dice doesn't go as far as it used to. Even spells like levitate got hammered hard. (the speed is sclerotic... 3m per point of force I could I have understood, but 1m per point of force is too slow for almost all combat uses; it practically requires the use of a Movement power now to get any usable speed).

Don't get me completely wrong I'm fine with a bit of the nerfing... there's a lot of mechanics I disliked such as the old object resistance... now that camera tossing OR dice to see through your improved invis is possibly a threat and there are no guarantees it won't get lucky.

there are fresh-out-of-chargen characters that have something like 20+ points of armour, as i recall. what are you using that has 20+ points of AP to make that 20+ armour meaningless, if you don't mind my asking?

now, obviously, you shouldn't be running into those builds everywhere you go. i mean, it takes a fairly specialized build with a considerable amount of expensive augmentations to pull off that much armour, so it's not like you're going to need to worry overly much against your typical security guard.

but against an opposing shadowrunner team, or against a special HTR team or other unusually difficult opponents, i don't think it would be too shocking to see those higher armour values come into play (especially once we start getting rules for military armour and such).

Just to sum this up:

Direct Spells now suck too much to be bothered with
Indirect spells suck too, but sometimes the secondaries can be useful.

Combat Mage archetype thus dies in a hail of gunfire.

The new Combat Mage has a high agility and a high Magic. He shoots guns and throws grenades in every situation where previously a spell wouldve got the job done.


Mental manipulation spells still end the fight in 2 turns (1 to land the spell, 1 to give orders).

1. nope, your other points prove this wrong.
2. Yeah! That's how it should be. Sounds really fun
3. In some cases yes, and it shows that it's important. At least you get 2 stats (usually Wil + Log I think?) to resist now, so it's not as bad as before.

I like this overall. Mages are still useful in battle: support (invis, darkness, mental manip, health boosts, physical barriers, etc.). And their indirect combat spells are still as good as ever. Direct spells have more of a niche, as pointed out repeatedly in this thread, but they are not completely useless either.

That isn't my reading of the discussion at all.
My summation is:

Direct Spells are now useful in specific circumstances, not all circumstances.
Indirect Spells hit about as hard as a Heavy Pistol, AND the secondary effects are also useful.

also, if you get desperate enough to take the drain (or have the time to prepare and recover in advance), indirect spells can still hit very very hard. it certainly isn't something easily repeatable, but it can be done.

Indirect spells basically start at hitting like a pistol, and scale up to heavier weapons depending on the drain you're willing to cope with.

Yeah, that sounds exactly like "indirect spells suck and direct ones sucke even more".

Mages win fights the best way possible: they bypass them entirely. If you can avoid a fight you manage to avoid a bunch of heat, a lot of noise and in some case getting shot.

This "Shot the mage last" style does not feel like shadowrun to me. A mage is supposed the be a threat in combat, not someone you dispose of after you killed the sam and the hacker.

No one doubts that the direct combat spells needed a nerf, but making them as useless as the decrease reflexes spell is just a fail at that task. (Especially when you make grenades the new stunballs, that kill all enemys with one complex action.)

Even if the spell still had a niche:
Impossible to resist, but then only dealing minor damage is also the most boring thing you can have during a fight.
Rolling dice to achieve something significant or fail, is what makes the game interesting.
Many spells are resisted with two stats now, so why not make direct combat spells be resisted with willpower + body? So a sam has actually a chance to resist that spell and the dice rolling is actually interesting. Then the damage should still be nerfed, but not that hard. If even a dragon is unable neutralize an unaware guard silently with a sleep spell, then something is wrong.

Where I've played, if there are combat-oriented player characters, there will be combat, period. There's no getting around it, no matter how crafty the characters try to slip in undetected. That would be like a team with a decker going on a run with no hacking. It won't happen.

The good news is that I'm not going to go through the alphabet of overstated cases, numbers I disagree with, overlooked rules and irrelevant (IMO) points I've seen.

Look at it this way. Some video gamers love their tank characters. To me, purposely taking bullets is the realm of highly trained bodyguard staff, and going on a run with the intent of getting shot would be lunacy, much worse than overcasting for physical drain. Still, having direct spells, which bypass all that armor, able to drop a target in one or two hits would make tanks, and more importantly NPC tanks, less viable. As a result, they need to do video game like damage.

Shadowrun is a team game. A magician's spells don't make her more powerful; they make the team better. If you want to complain that she can give herself better stats, heal herself or float like a balloon, then complain that she can do these things to her teammates. Her teammates should protect her from the opposition that will try to kill her, because now knocking them out will take time. If they have her back, things should work out. If it's this every character for herself style that I see posted all around Dumpshock then of course she's just going to die.

If I wanted to play a game that had only 2 options on a dice roll, I'd play D&D. I think that the last 1/2 of a Shadowrun is FAR more interesting than the first half; everybody's wounded, you're scavenging weapons because you're low on ammo, and you haven't even gotten to your goal yet.

you still shoot the mage first. and you do so for the same reasons you did before.

who the hell cares if the mage can instagib everyone. shadowrun is a game of eggshells wielding hammers. in some cases, those hammers are fully automatic doomhammers that drop from orbit.

being able to kill people? any chump with a gun can do that. that's no scarier than anyone else.

you geek the mage first in 5th edition for the same reason it has been a good idea to geek the mage first in any edition. because their spirits are powerful (less powerful in 5th than in 4th, but still very powerful). you geek the mage first because a whole team of invisible shadowrunners will ruin your day. you geek the mage first because maybe that mage can mind control you into shooting your buddies in the head. you geek the mage first because the mage might be able to turn you into a puddle of sludge. you geek the mage first because the mage can alter your memories and rip the thoughts right out of your head.

but seriously, damage? who cares. that saying never came about because of damage. lob a grenade or use a full auto burst from an assault rifle, and you get functionally the same results as any mage trying to deal damage, in pretty much any edition. heck, in most editions, you likely get *better* results much of the time by using guns, not just in 5th edition.

plus, as has been mentioned several times, it's not even true that a mage can't deal damage. even when using spells. a force 12 ball lightning will wreck your day quite effectively, and is within reach for many starting magicians (albeit not something you can do regularly). with the use of preparations, you might even be able to launch several in a single shadowrun. a force 12 lightning bolt is likewise reasonably possible, and again, with the use of preparations, you can likely get more than one available for use on any given shadowrun.

when you've got enough punch to instantly shred most security forces, plus all the other things you can build a magician to be able to do, a mage is *still* an absolutely devastating opponent.

but i'll tell you what: you go ahead and make an aspected magician that can only use combat spells. period. nothing else. no spirits, no adept powers, nothing but combat spells (i'll allow ritual spells, but only combat ones, and preparations of combat spells, too. it's not like i care enough to prevent you from using them). and i'll support an increase to that magician's damage to the point where they can sustainably duplicate a street samurai with an assault rifle, because at that point you're about as limited in what you can do as that street samurai with an assault rifle. until then, well, you pay for being able to become the master of just about every other area in the game by being only second best in that one area. deal with it. most other archetypes would love to be able to reach that level of effectiveness so quickly after chargen.

What kind of damage increase were you thinking about? Note that the aspected magician would be able to use spells/rituals or preparations, but not both (and of course they don't get spirits or adept powers). Were you saying that in addition to the spell damage increase you would allow an aspected sorcerer to use alchemical preparations?

Well put.

no, not an aspected sorcerer. aspected sorcerer is still ridiculously good, and still has a crudload of versatility and utility from spellcasting. i would have to be insane to think that an archetype that gets crazy stupid utility beyond everyone else (except for full mages and mystic adepts) should also get top-tier damage.

i am stating that if you were to introduce some new type of aspected mage that *only* gets to use combat spells (including spells, preparations, and rituals based on combat spells), i would offer a damage increase. no summoning, no artificing (other than making preparations). because at that point, you actually are legitimately a combat focused character.

you see, you know how in d20, literally all of the strongest character classes are some form of spellcaster? that's because in d20, someone got this completely insane idea that it was a good idea to make those classes have excellent combat ability *and* excellent utility both in and out of combat (including defensive spells that negated the supposed weakness of those characters, like the inability to wear armour, use weapons effectively, and not take very many hits). nothing the fighter, rogue, or barbarian could ever do will equal the power to make your entire party invisible, or teleport, or walk through an obstacle, etc. it simply doesn't even come close to comparing. even in a purely combat campaign, the fact that a wizard can just instantly kill things or instantly turn them to their own side made them so powerful that even the strongest melee classes just never even came close to them in power, unless you were talking about ridiculously optimized melee builds vs poorly optimized spellcaster builds.

that is what happens when you give a class that is the best in every non-combat area equal or superior combat capabilities. and the end result is that it sucks to be the poor SOB who's job it is to distract the enemy while the wizard/druid/cleric/artificer/etc do everything except for being a chew toy (and heck, let's not deceive ourselves, with the right build, those spellcasters could probably have also been or provided the chewtoy, but since that's a godawful boring job to have most of the time, they're happy to let the melee pretend they're needed for it).

that is why your magician absolutely should not under any circumstances have equal damage while also being a full spellcaster otherwise. in essence, the reason you need to "multiclass" (so to speak) to be able to deal roughly equivalent sustained damage without drawbacks is that you have a gargantuan pile of advantages elsewhere, and the only way to keep things reasonable is to actually let you have some disadvantages.

as for how much of a damage increase for that theoretical new type of aspected magician, i'd probably just slap a flat +4 damage increase onto all your spells (direct and indirect) and see how that goes. it's a bit of a kludge, but i think that would probably get the job done fairly well.

Here's a somewhat elegant way to give combat spells a little more oomph:

When casting, declare Force as normal and calculate Drain. You may choose to increase the DV of the spell by increasing the Drain, at a one to one ratio.

So if you want to cast a Stunbolt at a target, you might declare it at Force 5 (Drain 2). You really want to pour damage on the target with a reckless disregard for your own safety, so you choose to increase the base DV of the spell by 5. The new Drain is 7. You roll your 12 dice and get 4 hits. The target gets 1 on his Willpower roll, for 3 net hits. With the added damage, the target takes 8S. You then roll your 11 dice versus 7 drain, scoring 3 hits, leaving you with 4S from Drain.

This could also work with indirect spells, so a Force 6 Flamethrower with +4DV would do 10P -6AP and cost 7 Drain.

Doesn't it technically already work like that, since the higher the force, the higher the drain, and the more damage is done? Seems redundant.

For direct spells, you have to roll the hits to deal that extra damage.

@Jaid Naturally I was talking about limiting the spell type to combat. No need to sell me on the idea. Am I to assume no counterspelling or dispelling, either? Rather than one magical skill group, it's Spellcasting, Ritual Sorcery, and Alchemy (combat spells only) for +4 base damage to all combat spells or preparations? Would the chargen priority for this be the same as aspected magicians?

I think you've created a monster.

hmmm.... i'd allow counterspelling if they want to buy the skill for combat spells only. in theory, they could also dispel said combat spells if they paid for counterspelling, but in practice, i don't think it's really even possible for that situation to come up. however, on the off chance that some day they release a spell that gives you a sustained blast of flame (or similar for various other elements, or even as direct spells), you could dispel the sustained blast.

same priority as other aspected magicians.

and i don't think i've created a monster at all. like i said, ways to deal lots of damage are cheap and plentiful in the shadowrun world. i could care less if you're dealing your damage with magic (and risking drain) or dealing damage with bullets and explosive (and pretty much guaranteeing a loss of some amount of money, although of course you are hopefully gaining more than you lose in the process). damaging spells just aren't particularly scary. it's the many other ways a magician can screw you over that are terrifying.

While this is in danger of derailing the thread, I have to mention something about this.

I will always stand by the fact that this was not as much of an issue as it ended up being until WotC developed the Sorcerer class. It took the balancing factor of not having that many spells and lots of utility and turned it on its head by creating characters that could cast fireball 7 times a day. I know all the arguments about how non-damage spells are better, yadda yadda yadda (even though those who propoase 1/2 of these scenarios of twinning stat drain spells don't know the rules) but until the sorcerer came into being people were mostly ok with Wizards and clerics. your wizard was generally there to clear the room of annoying minions, get the party across a gorge, provide protection against fire when you know you're fighting a red dragon, etc. The cleric was usually too busy healing to actually do anything of note anyway.

Then 4th Ed D&D happened and it was completely unplayable, all in the name of balance. Problem was that most people didn't care that casters were more powerful. They were supposed to be.

4th had its own problems, but I think you looked at them wrong. The problem with 4th: Everyone is a wizard.


That said, back on topic I see combat spells like this:
I can cast a direct, and deal net hits damage. Thats going to be 3-4 on average with a magician with magic 6, spellcasting 6 and no foci. That 3-4 is going to be reduced by the resisting target, and deal less damage. All in all, more damage than would result from shooting a street sam with a pistol, but still far less than using an assault rifle or SMG. Congrats, if you bothered learning these spells, you get to kill mooks that automatically go down when they get hit anyway.
I can cast an indirect, and deal force + net hits damage, have a high AP, and have an environmental effect. This is about on the scale of a weapon. a weapon that has a good chance to hurt me too. Area spells are just a higher form of the same.
OR
I can use an actual gun, shoot the bad guys, and not have to worry about suffering drain and be generally more effective than if I had cast a spell at all. If I need elemental effects, I can use the various special ammos. If I need area, I can throw a grenade for pretty much the same.

I don't know man. Its an awful lot of karma to have a mage with both automatics and spell casting.

Are you really going to totally ignore spellcasting as a mage just so you can shoot someone with an SMG better? Are you going to give up turning invisible, flying, etc just so that you can be as good as the Street Sam in the Street Sam's domain? Seems kind of...counter intuitive to me.