I'm gearing up to play in a shadowrun game next week and I was perusing some of the threads here. I found in a Sr4 vs. SR 5. thread from December a comment that mages in third edition were more powerful than in any other edition.

Now I've played a fair bit of first edition and perhaps six game sessions of fourth edition. I read several of the third edition books ten years ago and I never saw anything in it that didn't make third edition mages significantly weaker than first edition mages.

Was there something that I missed that compared to first edition cheese like to elemental add sorcery actions that were dirt cheap, power focuses+ spell purpose focuses + expendable fetish focuses+ bonus dice from your familiar spirit + bonus dice for a talisman required spell= more dice than you'd ever need, watchers that destroyed everything in astral combat, and spells where the resistance test for the target was against your spell casting concentration but drain was against spell force (and with so many dice available why would you bother casting at forces that made drain hard to resist)?

I cannot say anything for 1st edition mages, but some SR3 highlights for mages were

- mnemonic enhancer which basically halved the Karma costs for skills, allwoding extreme high primary and a lot of secondary skills
- splitting of many skills, especially the firewarm skills, compared to sorcery (spellcasting, astral combat) and summoning (summoning, binding, banishing)
- shilding meta power made you more or less magic immune after some initiations
- cyberware and bioware were easily combined for only one point of magic loss
- Invisibility ruled into X-Ray Vision (FAQ)
- Human mages with an absurd Karma pool advantage
- sorcery pool easily pushable with ware
- all spells as force 2 without any Karma to pay (exklusive -2 Karma)
- higher level spells with sometimes massively reduced Karma costs due to meta quests being rollable
- High initiative due to force 1 increased reflexes in a force 1 spell lock /sustain focus
- powerful ally spirits and summoned/bound spirit powers like aid sorcery or the dreaded confusing or concealment power
- trauma damper + high pain tolerance, heaven for mages with drain issues. You could cast heaven into hell and still had only minor headaches
- power level for spells could be adjusted
- SR3 increased the current issue for mundanes: extreme high costs for improvements, lots of mundane surveillance which made playing a heavily cybered char undesirable, invention of social and artistic adepts.
- Magic rules for becoming ultra rich in a month with alchemy/enchanting

Tyrrel:
Every edition of the game has seen mages nerfed from the prior edition. So yes 3e mages are weaker than 1e mages. It's the classic 'fantasy' problem... what makes mages popular? They 'break' the rules... how? Magic! What do you mean, explain? It's... MAGIC! Creative mages find way to apply these 'breaks' in reality in ways the writers never expect and in the first edition of a game this is quite evident.



Off the top of my head one good example of this is mana barriers... living things used to not be able to go through them... So the mage casts a high force mana barrier across a road... the car passes harmlessly through since it's not living... but anything on the inside gets pasted as it runs into the barrier.

Spells are semi-living entities on the astral... you can intercept a spell with astral combat instead of counterspelling... etc.

Gross abuses of the game such as 'grounding' are in there as well.

2e:
Fixed a lot of the above abuses... magic system changed up... grounding remains in the game.
Mana barriers anything in a completely enclosed vehicle can pass through somehow... don't ask how since it's magic... combat bikers & go-gangers are out of luck as the trick still works.0
Speed mages... quite viable and only threatened by 'speed' sams... essentially they'd go first... then go again before anyone else could act.
Classic problem with 2e... frontloaded offense could end an encounter before the other side could even react.

3e:
Mages nerfed even more... power tricks such as grounding removed from the game.
Mana barriers only work on dual-natured targets or impede spell effects rather than anything which happens to be alive.
Example: old mage trick... basically a completely immune mage on the astral... sees his targets... orders a spirit to materialize in the middle of them. Then grounds out a powerball on his spirit with a readied action killing everything in the room... mage skips back to his body happy as a clam... never in any real danger from any mundanes.

People argue the reverse... that people can ground through a mages active foci... but due to reductions in the force/TN's etc. due to grounding and the force of the focus/etc. The mage shrugs it off with no damage... his teammates might take some if he doesn't counterspell effectively. Net effect... most mages could care less about grounding except to use it to attack others since it wasn't really a drawback to them.

Initiative system changed so everyone gets a go before others get 2nd actions. AKA as... oh crap... I dive for cover and get out of sight if I can rather than dying in a hail of bullets.

4e: is a little out of your scope...
but the big change here was the change to magic... (magic ratings got a lot lower... essentially magic attributes got roughly halved round up compared to prior editions). But the removal of dice pools made a big difference int he survivability of a mage.

A mage used to have a combat pool... he'd never really use... because he'd attack with magic.
This made the classic maxim 'geek' the mage a little trickier... because unlike a street sam who needed to save his combat pool for offense and defense. The mage would simply use his combat pool for defense only... then attack with a second fresh magic pool enhancing his skills.

I always found that the fact you choose the damage code is pretty strong. You can't put all day an initiate with shielding within your guards. Catched in pack, a mage can nuke a full squad without rolling that well.

A single watcher could never destroy anything in astral combat. The Watcher Attack Pack, however, was devastating under the right circumstances. Then again, this was true ever since Watchers came out.

If it makes you feel any better, possession mages have never ceased to be broken.

[edit]

What falconer said (he said it better than my ramblings)

The thing about 1e and 2e mages was they were very karma and priority expensive but they wielded insane power.

I'd have to double check my books to be sure but I thought In first edition the target number to summon watchers was how many hours you wanted them for and their force was determined by how many successes you got on your summoning test. So if you only needed the watchers for long enough to pound an opponent into submission you could get spirits with force very close to you dice pool for the summoning test, and yes you could get a pack of them but they were individually quite strong.

After writing that it would now be especially embarrassing if I remembered incorrectly

Every two successes I think, at least in 2E. However, they were also only astral beings, they couldn't manifest.

They could not MATERIALIZE... Manifesting was a different beast entirely.

yeah, manifesting is harmless, as all it does is to make you visible and able to communicate/see the real world.
while materializing means you become dual natured and actually gain solidity on the real world plane and can manipulate stuff and be attacked.

Manifesting also makes you vulnerable to mana-based attacks on the physical plane (physical attacks still can't hurt you).

Incorrect Glyph. Knowing the target is present isn't enough... you still must be present on the astral plane to hit an astral target. In 1e and 2e the point is moot... as the target is present on both planes.

1e.. Manifesting == Materialization. Target is vulnerable to physical & astral attacks

2e.. Manifesting == Materialization. Target is vulnerable to physical & astral attacks

3e... Manifesting != Materialization
Manifesting == immune to anything except astral plane attacks... can only communicate and annoy things on the material. Basically a sop to make it easier for an astral mage to communicate with teammates, just like how hacking was changed in 4e to allow the hacker to go with the team and accompany them instead of being 'pizza time'.

Materialized == can interact and be interacted with physically or astrally

But just like 4e and 5e... in 3e you can't target a manifested astral target with a physical plane mana spell.

I was talking about SR4 rules. Guess I should have said, since we're talking about magic through four editions. I'm so used to SR4 being the default assumption.

Under the Manifesting heading, page 184 of SR4 (not sure what the page number is for SR4A, or if they changed it):

"Manifesting characters and spirits, however, are vulnerable to mana-based magical effects on the physical plane."

That was removed as an error in the errata published soon after the books release. (god forbid, errata to support the product lines flagship product! )
It was incorporated in later printings.

"p. 184 Manifesting [4]
Change the second line to read:
“Manifesting is a psychic effect that allows an astral form to make itself visible and audible on the physical plane through an act of will.”
Remove the second-to-last line (the one beginning with
“Manifesting characters and spirits, however …”)"


I had forgotten about that misprint... hard to believe 4e was out for nearly a decade in it's own right there. It may have only been in the first printing run that ran out... then they had over a half year wait for more books to come out reprinted with the errata.

The reason is was axed is simple.... it broke the law of magic that spell effects can't cross the planes.

The really big change from 3rd to 4th edition was that mages had to buy their magic rating, it wasn't free at 6 like in 3rd. There were other major changes to 4th magic in the first batch of errata, I remember this included the bit where remote services freed up the spirit slot, which was another huge game breaker.

But overall, yes, mages were nerfed way back from 1st edition in 3rd. Many of the crazy abuses were removed explicitly in the rules as opposed by having to be house ruled.

I still believe the first printing of 4e from fanpro to be unplayable without the cheat sheets it made even the 2e player in me that would cross reference 3 chapters to figure out how to fight a spirit cry, then 5e came out... Soo spoiled by 4eA editing soo spoiled...