A conversation was starting in another thread and I thought that it is a great topic that deserves its own discussion.

Why have they allowed reagents to overcome the limit based on force for spellcasting?

What could be an undesirable consequence to not allowing the use of reagents for spellcasting? Is it a bad house rule?

I'm looking for reasons why it wouldn't be a good house rule. A reason why it's a good thing that rules allow the use of reagents for spellcasting. Same questions might apply to ritual spellcasting, summoning, etc. but I don't have much of an issue with those and I think we should just talk about effects on spellcasting first.

Here is what has been bought up already


Thoughts?

I quite like the idea of reagents, as it adds flavor to the magic system. I just think the implementation is completely broken. They allow a magician to raise the Limit on his spells as high as he likes, at negligible cost. A pound of reagents basically means no Limits.

The basic issue isn't reagents themselves - it's the irrelevancy of Force on many spells. If Force always mattered besides being a limit, then using reagents versus casting at a higher force would be a serious question, an actual tacical consideration that introduces variance between the Force based effects and limit. When it comes to spells that DO have Force-dependent effects, reagents are a very interesting addition (see Area spells for more on this notion).

I almost wonder if everything had Force based effects when reagents were introduced, or if there was something that got cut from the book for space that would have balanced it out (in which case, they certainly should have done something about reagents for the time being).

I haven't had a lot of opportunity to play around in the new system, but I'd be curious to see how it worked before removing it entirely. As they say, "everything has a cost..."

I know that that there's some issue with a Force 1 spell having a 5 limit using 5 drams of reagents. But you know what, that costs 100 nuyen. 100 nuyen is not an inconsiderable amount when you're discussing "ammo". Have you ever thought of pulling back your shot when you run across a ganger you need to ice wearing a leather jacket, but all you have is APDS in your gun? It's that sort of thing.

Allowing mages to increase their available power at the cost of nuyen is an interesting mechanic, and I'd want to see how it actually works in gameplay before determining it's "totally unbalanced". Maybe the mage uses reagents for his spells at the beginning of the run, but eventually runs out and has to start casting spells "for real" by the end. How does security respond to a random guy carrying 40 pounds of various magical materials in their backpack? Seems like that might make them nervous.

Anyways, that's what I think for now. YMMV.

the real problem isn't as much with one-shot instant spells. it's with sustained spells.

for example, force 1 increase reflexes loaded into a force 1 health focus is normally no big deal. throw in, say, 8 drams of reagents, and suddenly you've potentially got the equivalent of rating 4 wired reflexes (which don't actually exist, mind you).

200 nuyen isn't so bad when you're looking at rendering a half million nuyen piece of equipment obsolete.

and the only things i can think of that would break are the things that shouldn't work the way they do. for example, due to the limit when conjuring a spirit being the spirit's force, it is normally very difficult to successfully summon a force 1 spirit (it scores 1 hit and you automatically fail). set the limit to astral limit instead, and you have no problem with or without reagents.

Hmm, that gives me an idea. How would it be if the astral Limit applied to all magic, sorcery and conjuring?

One tweak would be to increase the reagent expenditure, to say Limit squared. So casting that Force 1 spell at 8 Limit would run 64 reagents instead of 8, at a relatively huge cost.

If you were to do that, I'd say:

Instant: Linear
Sustained: Square
Sustained in a foci: Cube

The idea being that you're having to spend the reagents not only to raise the force, but sustain that raise, and then again to allow the foci to handle it without blowing up in your hands.

bloody awful. you'd have the same problem as now for spells that are not dependent on force, minus the trivial cost.

Ok, so now reagents cost more money, or sustained spells cost much more money, or something like that.

But, and I'm only talking about spellcasting, I haven't really figured out why we even want reagents in the first place?

agreed. or at least, in terms of being able to use them to change limits. i'm fine with being able to use them for making focuses and such.

Hmm. How about this: expending reagents grants a dice pool bonus to Drain resistance? It needs a cap; maybe the rating of the skill being used (Spellcasting or Summoning)?

They do present interesting options for spells which scale on both Force and hits.

I'm not even convinced of that though. I think maybe I'd like reagents better if they affected drain. But that's more or less their goal, get the same effect for lower F, meaning lower drain. It seems to go around the basic cost that spellcasting is supposed to have, and in that way it makes me uneasy. Take mind probe for example, it has a fairly high drain, but only the hits truly matter, so just cast it force 2, put in 6-10 reagents, and go completely around.

You're saying it makes more sense for spells that need force. I agree, but many spells really only look at hits and I don't see how we can make all spells include force as an important element. And even for those spells that need higher force for some reason, is there really an interesting choice that we'll be missing out on if you take reagents out of the equation. Could you give an example?

Sure, let's start with Ice Sheet. Normally, its area is equal to its Force, but let's say you want to cover a smaller area - maybe to get a guy on a bike, but not the van right beside him. If you use Reagents, this works - you pick the Force that gives you the area you want, and use Reagents to be able to get a decent amount of hits to make the test difficult. Or maybe you need a strong Mass Confusion, but over a small area. Or maybe you need to be able to get a decent number of hits on a Detection Spell, but will be overloaded with information if you open the spell up to the full area. Or maybe you want to reduce the chances of your Flamethrower actually igniting something (diminishing the Fire AP by casting at a lower Force), so you pull the punch a bit on that and but crank the limit up with reagents.

Basically, when it comes to casting they seem to offer a sort of fine control, but unfortunately with a great many spells that isn't relevant per the rules.

Except for the flamethrower example, which is a little bit far fetched (if you don't want to burn things, don't use a fire spell; and I don't see the logic, in-world, of creating a powerful yet not very burning fire spell, it's counter-intuitive to begin with), the rest is all related to area. This is easy to solve, just consider that force is maximum area affected instead and let the spellcaster control it. It makes more sense then going through a complicated rule that breaks a lot of other things imo.

I'm not really convinced that reagents are essential from your example but at least it goes to show how they can be interesting within the current rules. It just goes to show that some other rules (area of spells) might need some fine-tuning.

That's because, at present, most Force-bound effects are tied to area. The more different sorts of effects are tied to Force, the more options reagents offer. As to the flamethrower example, that would be for a case where that's your one relevant spell, and you don't want to ignite the target - very much a possibility with Fire spells.

Right! There aren't many cases where reagents are a desireable feature. And your fire example is a matter of taste, I just don't agree: if you want to send powerful combat spells that don't burn targets, don't choose a fire-based spell. I actually find allowing fire spells to be both powerful and having little burning power can be an example of why not to keep reagents, not the other way around.

I think the why is bound up an attempt to fulfill the theme of the edition: everything has a price. Which, to some literalist thinking, means that everything should include some sort of Nuyen sink. Guns have ammo, that's a literal cost, so extrapolating, it means giving magic a form of "ammo" which then fulfills that cost theme (while totally ignoring that there is other sorts of "cost" that don't literally require a nuyen expenditure). I also personally don't like the further mirroring of magic and the mundane, but in the name of game balance, if X is identical to Y, balancing between the options becomes a lot easier, so there's an element of game balance at work as well. I think the ability to "fine tune" spells arose out of this solution in search of a problem, and the accompanying cheese is the unintended side effects.

As to what you lose by removing reagents from modifying the limit? A less overt translation of the theme of this edition. If they truly wanted to make this work, they needed to revamp how Force, hits, limits, and resistance rolls interacted when combined with reagents as a base function of spell casting, and not an appendix.

Thanks, very interesting point, you're definitely on to something. They thought they were just adding a minor, flavorful option, and they more or less broke a lot of balancing that was in place within the existing mechanics.

Well, in the past when I've made mages I tended to only pick one or two "Combat" spells in addition to a larger number of useful spells (heal, levetate, trid phantasm, increased reflexes, etc) and with possibly spell points going to rituals and preparations, it would be more likely that I only grab maybe one direct and indirect spell. Or maybe two indrect, one AOE and one not.

So in that case, I can easily see only having a flamethrower spell as my main "damager" that's not AOE. So absolutely there would be situations where maybe I wouldn't want to burn the place down around me to take out a target.

I like the idea of reagents for spellcasting, but I do agree at this point it seems like there's a lot of possiblity for abuse in certain situations. I wonder how their role will change when the magic book comes out. My hope is increased possiblity of creative uses without straight power creep.

My point however, is that it isn't reagents that are causing that to be so, but the Force-irrelevant implementations of most spells - and that SOME cases exist. And if that fire based spell was the only one you had for the circumstance, you'd use it - not wanting it to burn would be an unusual case, of course.

We mostly agree except for that complete detail that is the fire spell. You see it from a player's point of view, I look at it with flavor and setting in mind. It doesn't really matter.

I'd like to have all the spells to have both force dependent and hit dependent effects as well, but I think it probably can't be implemented for all the spells, and force should be favored here, not hits. I'd rather have some spells for which it's pointless to use reagents, then spells for which it's not very useful to have a high force (apart from harder to dispel, things like that).

Anyway, the way spells are written, I'm liking reagents as limit augmenters less and less.

It's funny how they took a mechanism of spellcasting (hit limits) applied it to everything else but created an exception for spellcasting.

No different than insisting on the setting of a limit of +4 bonus from spells/cyber/whatever but then kicking that to the curb for the player favourite of stacking of wired reflexes and Reflex enhancers (with the caveat of you have to be running these wirelessly to go over that limit on the bonus-the virtual carrot if you will to try and sweeten the wireless pot so to speak). And yet still not explain why other systems can not combine in similar fashions.

For pure convience only?

Regents add a playable aspect to magic use and give the magic system some depth. So spending more on regents can be like having better augmentations.

Or just denying access to regents which seem easier than denying characters their cyber and bio.....

What playable aspect do the actually add. Magic is already playable without reagents.

A playable aspect? Like TJ says, magic is already playable without reagents.

Depth? Maybe if the drawback was more than monetary. Say to use reagents you have to spend a complex action preparing them before you can cast with them. Maybe that could make them more appealing to me. But right now, just spending some cash can greatly change the whole way magic works. It's a small drawback, really. And I don't see how I could ever like holding a force 1, 8 success spell in a force 1 sustaining focus.

Never said it was not palyable. It will be the easiest point for characters and GM's to alter how magic actually works for one instance to the next, if at all......

And how would one explain away the rarity of magic using folk versus the technological faithful?

Sure, you can just make some obscene modifier to casting or put reagents in to give roleplaying some flavor....

I see no actual roleplaying flavor in Reagents. Probably because I have been using Fetishes and "reagents" in my Spellcasting (SR4A) for years without needing to have a mechanical benefit from/for them. *shrug*

I like reagents and the way they work in the core rules for SR5. I've been playing with Fetishes since SR3 and while I think the agin represented in any version before SR4 is by far superior SR5's system shows that it has room to grow into an interesting system all of its own. Sure if you do away with Limits the you don't need them, but that's a Houserule, limits are part of SR5. It offers a way for nuyen cost of bypassing the limiter of Force with out Edge, it's a game changer certainly but not a game breaker and it means mages have to bring tools along for the job if they want to go that little bit further without relying purely on luck.

The edition is still new and who knows what the supplement books will introduce to the rulesets? It wouldn't be the first time in shadowrun when a core system has been drastically added to and modified in its own focused sub book. With the promise of the Traditions becoming more as they were before the universal magic thing there is plenty of space for development.

I agree with the idea of needing to spend a simple action to prepare reagents for use. I don't think you should be able to have a backpack full of them to use as "ammo" without taking them in your hand in some way.

I also think that anyone spotting you using a reagent would have a much easier time knowing that you are using magic. "I wonder what that's for?"

I also think that discarded reagents, like "magical dust" would have the astral fingerprint of whoever used it to perform a magical effect, not to mention actual fingerprints on more tangible items.

Going further, orichalcum should be dense, full of mana and easy to transport. Other reagents should be bigger and bulkier, like an ostrich wing or something. (Okay, maybe not that.)

Full of mana true and they represent a cultural focus to me....

I like the idea of mostly mineral based reagents, and natural or not should fit in one hand. Anything larger can be represented by the foci or lodge....

On a technical side, you certainly don't unbreak the problem with spells cast at low Force, but with many hits, because you can still circumvent the limit with Edge. So, you would have to forbid that, too.

I don't GM currently, but when I do again, I will discuss with my players to have reagents allow you to shift dice from Spellcasting to Drain or vice versa. Sort of like a comeback of the good old magic pool. This would allow you to cast small spells safer or really burn yourself, when you feel you need it. Nothing a beginner would need, but later on, you have a much easier time to stack the Spellcasting pool than the Drain. Capped at your skill (Spellcasting or whatever), I would think.

But this has to be discussed before even making chars, because the F1 exploit is pretty central to many magic builds.

Using Edge isn't nearly as broken, because Edge is a severely limited resource. If you use it for nothing else but breaking the Force Limit, you can do that a maximum of six times, seven if you splurged on Exceptional Attribute. But really, how many Mr. Lucky magicians do you see? Using reagents, you can cast no-Limit spells all night long, at a trivial cost.