Objectively, I consider taking a pure roleplay spell that is basically the lazy version of a mundane task subpar to everything that affects game mechanics. Example: Makeover. A handy spell that makes sense for a lot of characters, but the spell basically replaces a shower and a shave.

Im talking about spell costs not variables. A spell's cost is always five karma, no matter your other stats. Makeover costs you the exact same as stunbolt which costs you the exact same as spiritbolt. There is a vast power and usability difference between those three spells because their scope differs by a wide margin. Yet they cost the exact same. That is the issue I'm pointing out.

I know many GMs that play by "canon only" standarts and while I could be mistaken, I seem to remember that self created spells are not missions legal. Canon spells set the standart for the game. If there were only healing spells and no combat spells in the core rules, you'd see 90% of all mages with guns to shoot people instead of self created combat spells.

See, that is where we differ, I think. I don't look at the mechanics first. For example - I have found that Makeover and Fashion are far more useful than the mundane equivalent task. Real hard to just wash away the blood and repair the holes in your clothes while trying to evade pursuit. The spells, however, don't care about the pursuit, and so are far more useful when it matters. Yes, many spells are not "mandatory" for the Shadowrunner, but Magicians will have them. If you are making metagame decisions based upon mechanics over the in-game fluff reasons for logically having a spell, then I think you have it backwards. It is not a system issue at that point, but a Player Issue.

I see no reason to have spell costs variable. All spells have utility. It is not incumbent upon the game to make that determination for the characters. Is a Spirit Bolt more useful than a Stun Bolt? Perhaps (in my book yes). Maybe it is the other way around. Is Makeover more important than Mana Bolt? Again, in my book that would be a yes, and you may disagree. The mage I played previously had exactly 2 Combat Spells... A Stun Bolt that only worked on Spirits (Spirit Bolt) and a Stun Bolt that required the target have Cyber implants (It messed with the bio/machine connections and caused painful, but not lethal, feedback as it scrambled the connections). You may not like those spells and consider them a waste of effort/karma, but to the character (and me by extension) they were an intrinsic part of his repertoire and he would never trade them for other Combat Spells (they were his first 2, gained after almost 30 other spells prior). Some characters prefer Illusion over Manipulation, other prefer Health over Combat. There will never be any consensus on which spells are more useful than others from an in game perspective. The only thing you might get is the top 12 Spells that players choose so that they can be the most powerful, 'bang for the buck," they can be. I, however, hate that particular stance. To contrast a bit... I think that Combat Spells are pretty useless, overall, in the grand scheme of things (which is why I rarely take them - I can always get a gun and suffer absolutely no drain whatsoever) in comparison to any other class of Spells, so should they be cheaper? What if you do not agree with me on that stance? Who decides which spells are more useful than other spells?

If you are in a Missions game, then yes, you are out of luck - so be it. That is the tradeoff you make to play in a Missions game. But arguing that spells created by the published Spell Creation rules are not valid is a cop-out. I do not expect to see any such rules for SR5, based upon their current publications (I could be pleasantly surprised, but I doubt it), but that is okay, since I far prefer SR4A anyways.

Mind that now in SR5, Overcasting is less about the Force of the spell and more about how many hits you get on the skill check. Using reagents, though potentially costly, can let you cast a spell at maximum force and ensure that you never break your Magic in hits.

Yeah, I know... Another bad design implementation, in my opinion.

The reason more spells is considered subpar is because there are frequently other ways of doing things that are more cost-effective. For example, Astral Window is only slightly more useful than straight up astral perception. Once you have stunball, you really don't need many other combat spells-- maybe an Indirect for drones, but that's about it.

That said, one of my favorite characters made heavy use of Fashion and Makeover. She was a beautician in her spare time, so it made sense from a roleplay standpoint. More importantly, I discovered that between the two spells, you have an instant disguise kit ready to go. With enough changes to someone's clothes, hair, and makeup, you can almost completely alter their appearance. Best of all, unlike Physical Mask, you're not actually sustaining a spell, so it can't be dispelled or detected in astral space. (Fashion used to have several other loopholes, which were closed. So changing someone's armored jacket to a bikini isn't possible anymore.)

Define Cost-Effective, though. What is more cost effective in one circumstance is not in another.
For example, I think all Combat spells are subpar to a Gun in a lot of circumstances... And in others they are not. Circumstance is everything.
As another: Astral Window is a great Detection Spell to give to a Mundane (Detection Spell, Right? AFB) - He cannot Astrally Perceive, so Astral Perception is unavailable to him, but know he can look into the astral.

Yes, Fashion and Makeover are awesome spells, even with no loopholes.

Well, compared to your first initiation, spells are clearly less cost-effective. Raising magic is kinda debatable, but usually adding a point of magic increases your versatility far more than getting more spells, especially when they're redundant.

The trick is to choose the spells with the most versatility, and not duplicating what other spells or tricks can do. When I build a mage, I almost never give them single target combat spells, because that's what a gun is for. Stunball is silent and AoE, so it doesn't duplicate what a gun does. Other spells with high versatility or usability include Barrier, Heal, and Magic Fingers. Fashion and Makeover were also really useful, especially when you use them to their full extent.

Depends upon the Initiation, I would think.
When you can initiate for 10 points or get 2 spells, it is a toss up. When you can increase your Magic Rating by 1 or get 5-7 more Spells, well, I fall on the side of spells every time.

See, I see having more, specific, spells as being more versatile than having fewer, broader spells (right tool for the right job and all that). What some see as redundant I see as more precise. Different Perspective, I guess.

Don't take this the wrong way, but that's a very D&D mentality.

I've seen a lot of D&D adventures over the years that assumed you'd have a caster with a given spell memorized. This is true for all editions: they presented a challenge, and listed a specific spell as the solution, and if you didn't have it you were screwed. That's why Batman wizards became popular. Shadowrun isn't supposed to be like that, there's supposed to be many approaches possible.

Further, there's a lot of redundancy in the Shadowrun grimoire. Why take invisibility, when Improved Invisibility is just as easy to learn? Further, that was another spell I seldom saw cast on someone else, so if you took the personal variant the drain was reduced. Same's true of Heal/Treat, Imp Attribute/Imp. Cybered Attribute, and many others.

No offense, but my point is about the mechanics of the game encouraging a detrimental behaviour, namely cherrypicking spells.

For the record, I agree with most things you say. How useful a spell is can be variable in the hands of a creative player and certain situations make some spells more or less useful. And personally I prefer characters that pick spells for their flavor rather than their power. But seriously, your example of a 400 karma utility mage is a far out fringe case. The vast majority of player characters will never see 400 karma. With 60 spells, you spend somewhere between 250 and 300 karma on spells alone. Most people don't have that much karma to spend total. In fact, a lot of people will never see half of that. If you deal in those numbers and have the certainty that more karma will come, investing five karma in a spell or five may not seem much. But when you earn your first 15 karma, learning a single spell delays your initiation to get a metamagic by a full run where having that metamagic or spell can be the difference between life and death.

If you don't have karma to toss around, you try to maximise your chances for survival. Sometimes that means learning a new skill like intimidation and sometimes that means learning a spell. To the average player character, spells like stunbolt and heal are far more useful than spells like makeover and fashion simply because their potential use comes up way more often in the average game. That disparity in usefulness coupled with the fact that spells have a fixed cost encourage players to only pick certain spells and skip others until their karma distribution choices have less overall impact. For many games that means that some spells will never see any use safe by NPCs.

And to make sure the point doesn't get lost in the inevitable 101 uses of makeover & fashion, lets have a look at a real oddball of a spell: Nightvision. For a normal reader, this spell seems quite usefull. You gain nightvision just like the technological enhancement. See in the dark is nice right? Well, sadly no. Not necessarily. In 5th edition, low light allows you to treat dim or partial light as full light. Partial light has a -1 modifier, dim light -3. Sustaining the spell is -2. So for partial light having the spell is actually worse than using your own eyes (-2 for sustaining the spell vs -1 for normal vision). The spell has no effect in full light or total darkness. So in 50% of the applicable and 75% of all possible cases, the spell has no or a negative effect. Yet it costs the same karma as every other spell.

I realize that nightvision is a fringe case and that most spells aren't such design failures, but it serves to illustrate the point that the scope of spells differs vastly and that scope is not reflected in their karma cost. Heck compare control throughts/ actions to poltergeist. All three are printed in the core book. Poltergeist is a very cool spell but it pales in comparison to the control like in terms of raw power.

No worries. I have a thick Skin.

I find the Shadowrun Quest for more power (MORE DAKKA) to be tedious, and it irritates me no end (I know, so I am weird). In the end, I see more individuals go for sheer power over something that actually makes much more sense for a character (how many characters do you see that have had absolutely no life experience prior to their entering the Shadows (with absolutely no skill sets from before the shadows) - I see it ALL the time), and the only reason I can get from such individuals is "because I can, so why not? None of that stuff matters NOW..." Especially in Shadowrun, I see decisions based more on expedience and power over actual in-game perspectives, and you really don't have to look very far on Dumpshock to see the same mentality. How often do you see a request to help streamline a character for power.

Yes, there is some redundancy in the Shadowrun Grimoire, but that is okay. I find that it promotes more individuality in characters. Maybe someone does not want to (or cannot) suck up excessive Drain for the Improved version of a said spell. Maybe someone likes Fire over Ice, or Acid over Sound... Whatever. It keeps characters from looking like cookie cutter cutouts. How many times have you seen a group of Magicians, and they all have roughly the same 12 spells? Boring, Boring, Boring. There is variety for a reason. I wish that there was MORE variety. The Spell Creation rules help in this regard. It is a rare thing to see a Magician with more than a dozen spells, and that is irritating (at least to me), because there is more to magic in Shadowrun than 12 spells, 2 Traditions and 6 Spirit Types. UMT was awesome and has such great potential, but few people actually utilize it to its potential. And that is sad. But as long as Players only care about the Power available, that will not change. Ah well...

I will preface the following with the following: I do understand where you are coming from, to be sure.

Cherry picking spells is definitely the issue, but the problem is that the PLAYERS don't pick the spells based upon their Characters, but upon their usefulness in killing stuff (ie. Characters probably started casting spells when puberty struck, or possibly even earlier, but you never see any spells from that timeframe). It is not about the Character at all, otherwise you would see more variety. Like I was saying above, most Magicians would have only a few spells applicable towards Shadowrunning, and the vast majority of their repertoire would be spells learned prior to ever entering the Shadows. But you never see that, because those spells would "just be a waste of build points, as they don't help me kill things or be a better Shadowrunner." It is just an irritating occurrence is all.

i dunno, i can imagine all kinds of uses for certain spells that are common to shadowrunners as a teenager.

for example, influence. heck, if you were bullied a lot, the ability to detect enemies, dodge punches, or soak damage may have been useful on a regular basis (fireball less so, but it might be a spell you manifest in an extremely stressful situation).

Actually, I've seen very few characters take spells based on their ability to kill things. Most of the time, I see mages with only one or two combat spells, usually stunball and something for drones. The rest of the spell selection goes to utility spells: imp invis, Heal, Trid Phantasm, Magic Fingers, etc. Spells that see a lot of use and preferably, have many different applications. The first rule of min/maxing is to get the maximum benefit for the minimum cost, and so being very selective about spells helps.

You just made my book of cool people.

True but the reason for that is not that everyone's a munchkin but that there are so few points to go around that people gravitate to the spells that will serve them best.

If you give a person a budget of five bucks and then price food at four bucks and books at one, don't be suprised if that person only buys one book. Imagine CGL priced Shadow Spells and the other minibooks equally to the core books. Sure people have a choice wether or not they buy it, but a lot less would simply because the price/value ratio would be off.

I once played an illusionist mage. He had been a special effects guy in Hollywood before botching an effect and blinding some second rate star. Couldn't find work after that and entered the shadows. I started out with no combat spells and no healing spells. A few runs passed and despite never taking a single bullet (yay Disregard. I miss that spell.) I pretty much had to learn to heal and buff. Not because it fit the character or because I wanted to, but because not having those spells made the game less fun because people were bitching that I was slow and they had to hire outside help for healing.

In contrast to DnD, shadowrun as a system makes very few assumptions about what spells a mage has, but it still makes assumptions. Building a sam without some sort of initiative increase is possible and sometimes makes sense but it will be a severe disadvantage in play because the game assumes that a sam is fast. The same goes for a decker without certain programms. The difference between all those is that spells are the only thing that costs karma while the other things cost money.

Thanks.



I LOVE my Russian Unaugmented, un-Awakened, un-Emerged Street Sam Mercenary (SR4A). He is tons of fun.
But I do take your point.

Another thing to consider: while raising magic is expensive, it increases your ability with every spell you have in multiple ways. On top of that, it improves your ability with spirits, as well as many other things. So it becomes a tradeoff between knowing a lot of average spells, or being really good at a select number. Mechanically speaking, being good at the right few spells is much better.

But that is strictly a matter of opinion (or even preference).
I prefer a decent Magic Rating (3-5 or so) and more spells, over a Magic Rating of 6+ and a few spells. I would far rather be more versatile than more powerful (power generally tends to be boring, boring, boring for me - there is generally no challenge to being powerful).

Besides, at the end of the day, a good Conjuring skill is going to beat any spell you could ever know for damage potential.

A couple spirits have twice the number of actions per round you do, after all, and better powers to boot.

Spirits are useful, to be sure.
However, it really depends upon the parameters in place at the table you play at. For us, any Spirit Force 4+ spends Edge to resist summoning/binding. So, at that point, you tend to see far fewer High Force Spirits in play (though they do occur).

Yeah, but we could go all day if we were to argue 'that doesn't work because my table houseruled it out'.

No doubt... Fluff has powerful spirits as rare, but yet you can summon stupid powerful spirits right from Character Gen. Boggles the mind, really.
However, it is not a house rule per se. ANY spirit can spend Edge to resist summoning and/or binding should it choose to do so (from Force 1 to Force Unlimited). I like that we have more constraints than are delineated. They do not stop you from trying to summon or bind spirits, they just provide consequences if you choose to do so.

Interesting. Do the magicians at your table end up taking summoning (and binding and banishing), or do they more focus on spells?

I admit that personally that house rule horrifies me. I first played a shaman in SR1 with all of 3 spells, so making good use of the terrain spirits was a very large part of what he was about. But spirits were not big combat tools, at least how we understood the rules, so it didn't seem crazy powerful.

Mechanically, no. Being very good at a select few spells is better, especially if those spells are chosen for practicality and versatility.

If you personally prefer to be Batman over Superman, that *is* a personal opinion and preference. Some people don't like playing Superman, and that's fine. But that doesn't mean Superman is mechanically less powerful than Batman.

Indeed

Magicians at our table do take both skill sets.
Spirits are useful after all. The difference is that we tend to use more Force 1-4 Spirits than Force 5+ Spirits.
Banishing is not seen a lot, at any table I would imagine, since a good Spirit Bolt or directed Spell works far better than Banishing does most of the time, though against powerful spirits Banishing might be better (theoretically) due to less services owed.

It really isn't as horrifying as it sounds, to be honest. You tend to see less powerful spirits in play (on both sides) because it is harder to get the more powerful spirits reliably (which is the whole point). But when they DO show in the game, they actually mean more (again, on both sides) because they are much, much rarer.

Again... BETTER is an Opinion, not a fact.
You are Objectively FAR LESS Versatile the fewer spells you have, even if you have selected spells with moderate to high versatility. The character with more spells can have the moderate to high versatility spells AS WELL AS the more specialized spells that elude the mage with fewer spells.

I never said Superman (The High Rating Mage with Fewer Spells) was less powerful than Batman (The Moderate Rating Mage with More Spells), but he IS Less Versatile (Right Tool for the Right Job is far better than simply using a Hammer, Wrench and Screwdriver for anything, after all). Of course, one could argue that Power is its own versatility, but I would not be the one making that argument. When you are less versatile, you have fewer options, and I prefer Options over Power every time and twice on Sunday.

With the right spells, you can do everything the swiss army mage can, only better in many situations. Quite a few of the spells are redundant or overspecialized to the point of uselessness, especially when you allow custom spells.

I mean, why have invisibility when you have improves invisibility? They do exactly the same thing, except improved invisibility is clearly better. The only drawback is drain, and that can be offset with the Personal limit. Stunball is probably the best all-around combat spell; why would you need manaball/bolt if you have it? And even when there is a clear advantage to one version of a spell, sometimes it's just not good enough; look at Heal/Treat for an example. Even though Treat had advantages, most people preferred Heal.

You are not objectively less versatile with more spells, that depends heavily on comparative spell lists. If you have ten combat spells, and I have five select ones, I'm more versatile than you. However, if I have a higher Magic ans spellcasting skill, I *am* objectively better at casting what I have, because I can throw them more effectively. That's just the math of the dice pools.

Spells are useful, but they are not all equally useful. After you get the best ones, the others can quickly reach a point of diminishing returns, or redundancy. And don't forget that the mage initiating to improve his Magic isn't just getting a higher stat, but metamagics, which can be more useful than an overabundance of spells. Mages, honestly, are Karma sinks. Even if you aren't interested as much in raw power, they still have so many demands on their Karma - initiation, skills to improve, binding foci, etc. Getting a spell which is of only marginal use seems frankly like a waste. It is less Batman vs. Superman, and more like Batman adding acid gel next to the acid spray and plastic explosives on his utility belt, instead of turbocharging the Batmobile or practicing some more with his batarang.