It seems like magical and resonance characters can do pretty much everything a mundane can do, but better. Am I missing something?

Maybe I should've named this thread "why *wouldn't* you play a mage/tm?"

The issue I'm having revolves around my family joining me for a game. My son is playing a TM, my daughter is playing a Mage, and my wife is going with a Face sort of concept. I don't want to run another TM or Mage, because it would take away from my kids' characters, but I don't really know how to play a mundane, either. Everything I see makes it seem like Mages and TMs are just flat out better.

What can I do?

You could stop thinking about efficiency and start thinking what would be fun for you.

The gap isn't that wide in practice (even in SR5), and papersamuraiing doesn't really help.

To answer your thread question:
If you would enjoy playing someone with chrome and / or a street code of honor, the samurai is for you. If not, look elsewhere.

Because you want to play a Sam.

A Sam still is OK in combat compared to a mage (as long as he doesnt summon Spirits, or sustains a lot of spells using sustaining foci, or uses mass control thoughts, then a mage is much better).
The mage however is better at anything else, except hacking.

If you're looking for Build Efficiency ™, just make an adept and take a few augs for the stuff that's cheaper as chrome than via PP.

If you're trying to make a character, make whatever you think would be fun to play.

If your table makes whatever you want to play not worth playing because they're monofocused on charop, you probably aren't going to have fun at that table, and may need to find another game. In either case have a long chat with your GM and other players and get a feel for everyone's expectations.

Because razorgirl or gillette sounds so much better than psysad?

(4th Ed) I actually just finished making a street sam last night for an upcoming game. My dude is a face, driver, drone support, matrix support, centralized TacNet, and he's got 14-ish dice for melee and ranged combat in addition to 7 Bod and 15/12 armor.

Oh, and because of the Calling rules and the fact that he has Arcana, he can fit in some limited astral support as well.

EDIT: Rating 2 MBW; R4 Cybereyes; R3 Cyberears; R2 Muscle Toner; R1 Muscle Aug; Cyber Forearm with datajack, spur, gyro stabalization. He can fire an Ares Alpha in burst both actions and not take recoil.

2XS, a properly built Sammy can be a melee combat / gun bunny / hacker / face / all-skills-man* in one person who's abilities are NOT affected by background count. It's the one reason I have a synaptic booster in my combat mage rather than using a sustaining foci. I know when crap hits the fan, I can count on my booster to give me the extra initiative passes that I need to survive. Now a Sammy can forget about the booster and start rocking Move By Wire. The level of boost of MBW is insane... and you get free skillwires on top of it

* == you need skillwires to pull this last one off.

Sure, a mage is powerful. If you are the only player, I’d say a mage is a good choice. A second mage is also going to be powerful, and there are some things where working together can be really effective. But, on the other hand, a lot of what mages are good at is empowering and enabling other characters, and mages would really rather put all their karma into improving and broadening their magic skills, not secondary competencies. And from experience, a melee troll or a gun-nut can put down raw damage that will impress even a mage, samurai can soak damage that would devastate a mage, and the combination of magic and someone with good infiltration skills is amazing for getting into places.

I guess what I’m saying is think not so much raw power as synergy. Especially when playing with family, where you might especially enjoy helping others’ characters shine.

There are still a variety of abilities that only Ware does well. Skillwires for a Jack of All Trades or Pretender character are especially interesting to me, and recent books have provided us with (in 5th) with a subscription system for being able to download a skill or language as needed. (But only one at a time.)

They had Skillsoft Subscriptions in 4th Edition, too, located in the back of Unwired if I remember correctly.

There are a number of spells that make anything a mundane does superfluous.

Examples:

Interrogation -> Mind Probe
Persuasion,deception -> Influence/Control Thoughts
Stealth -> Invisibility, Silence
Climbing, Jumpjng, Personal Transportation -> Levitation
Medics -> Heal
Disguise -> Physical Mask
Perception, Drone Exploration -> Clairvoyance
Finding somebody -> Search
not available to mundanes, maybe holo projectors -> illusions
not availabe -> shapechange
smoke grenades -> smoke spell
lots of cyberware -> increased reaction


some spells are bad:
armor, direct combat, barriers, duration of control thoughts, but the vast majority is much better than anything mundanes will ever do


Combat:
Spirits (nothing comes close, keep summoning level 6 fire elementals until the opposition is dead, or toss in other spirits with energy aura if they start to bring water, do so from the couch in your home)

Exploration:
Astral Space

Furthermore: Only magic can counter magic, but magic can also counter physical

The most effective 1 man runner team is a mage.
The most effective 2 man runner team is a mage and a hacker
The most effective 3 man runner team are 2 mages and a hacker
Only at 4 man runner teams, other roles start to make sense if you are about effectivity alone.

Inaccurate on many, many points. Personal experience and opinion does not equal fact. I mean, I'm the first one who'll espouse how powerful magic is in the setting - after all, I wrote a guide showing how powerful it truly was - but I've also explored the mundane and the Matrix and both are equally powerful. What matters are the circumstances. For example, each of those spells you listed would be significantly less effective versus AIs, while in BC, or against gnomes/fomori, or against spirits/other summoners.

As for "magic countering magic" - SnS rounds, ramming vehicles, grenades, and APDS tend to deal with most things magical. I have yet to see a mage that doesn't die when you shoot him enough, and I have yet to see a spirit that won't succumb to a gun-bunny who shoots it enough times. I mean, hell, my brother solo'd a F8 or F10 (I forget, it was years ago) Beast Spirit and the initiated mage who summoned it, and he was a fairly nondescript elven gillette.

I do agree that mage types have grown in power and flexibility massively over the editions. I played back in 1st, and one of the two characters I played was a shaman. I came back in 5th to run a game which has a shaman, and it is completely different.

Having said that, I've seen some of the limits of the shaman -- in part related to the fact that while a mage CAN be good at almost anything, none actually ARE good at everything, choices have to be made. But the point about a 2nd mage being the first choice of a third character ... I can see that argument.

Although as always, interesting, fun, characters >> raw power, IMO.

Please stop bringing up special cases to counter day to day realities.

Or are

what your average runs consist of?

Furthermore, there is no way anybody mundane can even remotely cope with a flood of force 6 spirits or even a single force 10 spirit.
If you think otherwise please post the math.

I start to feel insulted by your "bullets are not deadly - I know a case where somebody dodged one once" logic.

Quoted for truth.

Background Count, and Wards, are a common occurrence in our games. And why, do you ask? Because they are one of the ways to balance out magic. You should routinely hit (in SR4A) Background counts of 1 to 2 on a fairly regular basis, and Wards even more often. Even in SR5 it is pretty damned common in our games, so I do not see why you think it should be rare. What is your basis for this position?

Having played the game since its inception, I can confidently say that there are counters to almost anything. I play a Non-Augmented, Non-Emergent, Non-Awakened Mercenary from time to time (SR4A), and he is totally awesome, even against mages and spirits. Are mages more powerful in some circumstances? Sure, but not all Circumstances. Same goes with Hackers as well.

It sounds like your table has different experiences, but please do not assume that all tables are identical to yours. Maybe you allow unrestricted summoning of spirits with no consequence? Maybe Magic is an I-Win button for your mages, but from my experience, I can say that it is definitely not. I know others that would say the same thing. No one is arguing that magic is not powerful, but then, so is a Dronomancer with good drones and a Sam with good equipment. It is all situational.

I agree on your assessment of wards. They are the only thing keeping mages in check. Background count not so much, as the effects of often occurring bc is small.

And yes there is a counter for everything, (except horde of force 6 fire spirits), but that's not the point.

From a player perspective a mage does most of the things better than the mundane. It is irrelevant that what he does can in principle be countered. The mundane stuff can also be countered and is on average much less effective.

You can't deny that a mage with the spells given above make lots of character concepts just bystanders,that hope a ward will pop up so they can contribute.

BTW at our table summoning was nerfed to take force minutes and only one bound and one unbound spirit per summoner. And still my mundane players complain about spirits being too strong. Did you do the math of a force 8 fire elemental in 5th edition lately? What do mundanes do against that? Carry water? Let alone against a number of force 6 fire elementals every complex action you get with standard rules out of the air no way to detect, avoid, or prevent with any security measures except shooting the mage outright before.

I think the root of my anxiety is that I was planning on playing a Dronomancer and gave it up so my son wouldn't feel gimped in meat-space. So now I'm looking for another niche to fill, when I was all excited about how awesome my dronomancer was going to be.

It's difficult for me to get excited about a street samurai when I keep comparing him and the cost of his chrome to the cost and effectiveness of my dronomancer's sprite-enhanced drones.

Thoughts?

Take your own medicine before you prescribe it for me.


Fair enough.

Assuming 4 dice are 1 success, for the sake of averages.
F6 Spirit has, on average:
6 Reaction = 1.5 successes.
ItNW 6. You need a DV of greater than 12 or some way to mitigate that otherwise they ignore the attack.
Body 6, plus unmitigated Armor from above for soaking damage.

To attack this we need
Agi 7
Weapon Skill (Specialized) 7
Smartlink 2
TacNet 2
Total of 18 = 4.5 successes.

These stats are easily achievable. I built an ork sammy/face/driver/rigger yesterday who just happens to have these stats - they aren't special.

That turns into 3 net successes for a basic taser, turning that into a 9 DV, -1/2 AP attack. -1/2 AP means it bypasses ItNW, leaving the spirit with 6 armor and 6 body to soak 9S(e) damage. That averages to 3 successes, droping it from 9S to 6S, more than filling up half it's Stun track. By some readings of RAW the spirit is still subject to the electricity's secondary effects. Assuming that's true, then the Spirit then needs to do a Bod + Wil (3) Test or fall unconscious, immediately disrupting. With its 12 dice it should be able to pass.

If you do not believe it's subject to that rule, or if it does not disrupt from electricity, then you simply shoot it again. It will end up with (on average) another 6S damage, placing its total at 12 while its Stun track only goes up to 11. Disrupted spirit with easily achievable stats and using only a taser or any other weapon loaded with SnS rounds.

F10? Ok.
10 Rea = 2.5 successes.
ItNW 10. Adjusted damage value greater than adjusted 20 armor.
Bod 10 plus unmodified armor from above.

This will require a little more specificity, but still achievable within 400 BP, and certainly achievable afterwards.

Agi 9
Weapon skill (Specialised) 8
+1 Reflex Recorder
+2 Smartlink
+4 TacNet
Total of 24 = 6 successes.

That's 4 net successes, leaving you just shy of being able to pull the same maneuver with a taser/SnS. But what of other weapons? At my table, sniper rifles are really admired weapons. A Barett Model 121 loaded with APDS rounds (acquired easily enough after game start) is tossing 9P with -8 AP. Using that we have 13P versus a modified armor of 12, which gets through. That's 22 dice (avg 5.5) to reduce 13P, which results in 8P - spirit is still up. But yeah, that's one Simple Action. Next is another round and the spirit pops.

Both above instances are without Edge being spent on either side. It gets easier if your players spend Edge and the spirit doesn't, obviously. Hell, with Edge you can pop a F10 spirit with a taser.

But I didn't only mention firearms. There's also hitting the big scary spirit with a car, a perfectly rational response. If you hit with a vehicle between 21 and 60 meters/CT (most vehicle's Accel speeds for tactical combat) then you're doing an attack of Body P damage, -1/2 AP. If you choose a real car and not a commuter, you're looking at a base of no less than 10. If you're using a GM Bulldog that's a freaking base damage of 16. At this point the only problem is hitting the spirit, as they use Rea + Dodge to avoid being hit as opposed to just Rea like a gun. If you can hit them, though, it's almost a guaranteed disruption, especially using a van against a F10 spirit. That's not even using a Ramming plate, which allows you to do that with a motorcycle. There's a reason I have something saved in my files titled "Murdercycle."


There's something I've heard about responding to people who are feeling insulted, but I choose instead to remain civil. Suffice it to say I don't care what your emotional state is when your arguments are broken on the altar of RAW.

If you're not experiencing BC often, like the rulebooks actually state, but you're encountering hordes of F6 spirits... You and I are not only at different tables, but apparently playing different games also.


Not only can I but I did.



Maybe if you encountered BC and enforced the inherent limitations on Bound and Unbound spirits you wouldn't have to make such a house rule. Even allowing Cha number of spirits isn't an end-all - you gank the mage and the spirits don't care anymore.


(emphasis mine)
You can't detect spirits in 5th Ed? I think I found your problem - invisible spirits making attacks that are unavoidable are your problem, and likely a result of misreading the rules.


If you're only comparing cost-efficiency you'll never be happy. Try looking beyond that. For example, your sprite-enhanced drones may be a lot cooler than an average Sammy, but that sammy can be woken out of a dead sleep and be able to perform whereas your TM needs all the setup of registering sprites and allocating tasks. Also, your TM may be able to field a number of drones, but keep in mind those are technically NPCs on the field. I'll take a mandalorian over a squad of CIS drone troops any day.

You can cluster, say, 3 combat drones together, and prior to starting the run compile 4 rating 12 machine sprites. Yeah, the Fading is physical and hellacious, but you have time, fading can be healed with magic (unlike drain) and you only need 1 service each. 3 sprites you command to operate your drones, the 4th one sustains Diagnostics on the cluster.

12 pilot, 12 targeting autosoft (and 3 more autosofts of your choice, one for each full 3 rating worth of your sprite) plus the minimum 6 dice bonus for Diagnostics, and you've got some cheapish, *very* deadly drones.

Without magic or resonance, essence-focused characters seem like little more than really expensive drones that are difficult to mod.

With magic, you could do the same thing with Spirits, though you'd have to bind them for more services. Of course that's what Spirit foci are for. But then you get ItNW in there for good measure, plus powers that do Force (12!) DV.

And that's before Initiation/Submergence, which mundanes have no analogue for, unless you look at Delta-grade ware in a certain light.

I feel like I'm missing something.

Maybe.. a melee focused character with assloads of reaction, dodge, and MBW to the point of being able to just about side-step bullets. Melee to get the NPCs attention on me and away from my wife and kids, then go full-defense to keep from getting shot. If they switch targets away from me or run out of IPs, cut them in half with a monofilament chainsaw...

I don't know if he'd be that powerful per se, but running fuckers down with a chainsaw sounds funny as *hell.* lol, force a composure test on the enemy by having a screaming lunatic with a chainsaw come charging at them. The more I think about this, the more I like it.

Okay, so the daddy (me) is gonna tank, sort of. Suggestions? I'm thinking MBW, monofilament chainsaw, and/or loud, scary guns, like LMGs or grenade launchers as attention-getters. Fully-automatic shotgun with an under-barrel chainsaw... WEEEE!

Again, just "thinking out loud" as it were, this would probably go really well with my family's sense of humor and help draw them into the game. What do you guys think? What else could I add? I don't want to load up on armor too much, as all the bulk kind of defeats the "American Psycho" vibe I'm getting right now. Light and fast, float-like-a-butterfly, sting like a chainsaw wielding maniac...

Even a BGC of 2 screws with Mages if they did not plan for it; and if they did, they deserve their power. Yes, Spells are awesome, but rarely do the Mages I see have all those spells. The best Mages, in my book, Have a Magic of about 4 and more spells than they can count. Problem is that all those spells cost a lot of Karma, and that is generally why you do not see mages with a ton of spells. Generally I see about 10-14 spells on a mage, and they are often the same spells, for the most part. One of My favorite characters of SR4A eventually attained a Magic 5, 4 Initiate Grades and 65 Spells (Spells alone cost 290 Karma, I started with 8 spells - But I still could not cover everything, I had a list of another 50 Spells I was purchasing and learning as the Karma Flowed). But he was not a solo runner. He definitely needed the other team mates to complete runs.

See, we compensate for Spirits by them resisting both Summoning and Binding (All Spirits at Forces above 3) with Edge Expenditure. REALLY cuts back on the Power level of Spirits when summoning them can kill you. 5th Edition cuts back on that a bit, but not all that much, and Spirits now only have Half Force in Edge, so they cannot be extreme powerhouses any longer. Saw a Force 5 Spirit deal 20 DV to a Mage cause it got really lucky with its resistance. And that damned Force 4 Viscera (Water) Spirit my necromancer kept trying to summon almost killed him each and every time. Was awesome.

First off, like I said, if you have the massive amounts of time and resources available for getting one service to be used on the drones, good news to you. You can't do that on the fly, and you certainly can't sustain that through the entirety of a 'run. The sammy can.

On chainsaw-ness?

Lancer


Chainsword



YMMV, definitely. I hate the concept of automatically having spirits spend Edge to resist being summoned, but hey, it works for your table.

Yeah, I know.
There are ways to mitigate it, and they take effort, but it works for us. And any mage that cares works at it... those who do not keep to the lower Forces... Cannot tell you how many times a Force 2-3 Spirit made the critical Difference.

I've had a lot of fun playing my heavily cybered decker/streetsam. He's pretty good at a lot of things, and works fine in the barrens. You can make a character that's better at anything than my guy, but I as a player, am never stuck sitting and watching. With a little (maybe a lot) of cyber, and not spending all of your resources on magic or resonance, you can be good at a lot of things. And since he's a missions guy, and you never know who's going to be at the table with you, being able to do a lot of things is awesome.

Very Much Agreed on this point.

You can't sustain the service through the entirety of a 'run? If the spirit/sprite is bound/registered, I was under the impression that tasks were not limited in the time they could last. A Spirit of Man could theoretically sustain a spell as a service until it got disrupted, or a Machine Sprite could sustain Diagnostics ad infinitum.

...or am I reading it wrong?

Bound Spirits Sustain a Spell for Force Turns, for a Single Service... Don't remember, but I think Sprites are the same, based upon their Level. When used correctly, with all their limitations, Spirits are not really as powerful as they are made out to be. Though they can be a game changer when used at the right moment.

You can, of course, BIND a spell to a Spirit, but their Force degrades by 1 for each day it is bound. When they hit Force Zero (0), they cease to exist. Usually a bad thing to do to a spirit, and gets you a horrible reputation.

They sustain one of *your* spells for Force Turns. A SoM can cast a spell that you know itself as a Use of a Power, and should be able to sustain that on its own indefinitely, same as any other power.

The Sprite in this case is not sustaining a CF, but a power (Diagnostics) or carrying out an open ended "pilot this node" task.

Yes, A Spirit of Man may do so... Said spells are just as dispelable as normal spells. They are nice, but not generally overpowering.

Also there exists long term binding. Pay a little karma, get a service for a year.


But yeah, the feasibility of the incredibly open-ended "pilot this node" task is suspect to me. What I meant when I said that you can't sustain it through a whole run is this: if you change what you want the drone to you it very well may cost a new service... that you don't have. You have limited resources in the way of tasks that can be performed, and the resource drain in time required to get that one service is prohibitively expensive.

The street sammy has no such limitation.

Changing what the drone does shouldn't cost another task; changing what the Sprite does will. And while I agree that "Pilot this node" is nebulous and open ended, it seems within the bounds of the rules as written. It doesn't get really cheesy until you realize that all the drones clustered like that count as one node, and the Sprite counts as "in" all of the drones simultaneously, and all that that implies.

Also, the fact that only Awakened can disrupt spells and only TMs can hack TMs again lends itself to the whole "mundanes get the short end of the stick" thing I started this thread with. Mages aren't OP, as long as there's a Mage around to disrupt his buffs. TMs aren't OP, as long as there's a TM handy to Decompile his Sprites and hack his Bionode. Street Samurai, well... no special immunities there.

Case in point: if you come across a group of a Mage, TM with at least one combat drone, and a Street Samurai, who would you focus on last? Pretty sure it'd be the Street Samurai.

No, it depends on who's doing what. If that sammy has a lot of firepower he's focusing on the group, he's the biggest threat at the moment. We can care about a buffed mage after we deal with hails of grenades and rockets.

It's all situational. It's close to impossible to make generalizations like that.

EDIT: Also, what edition are you doing? My expertise is in 4th Ed. I'm about to go fact-check sprites Tasks and didn't want to search through the wrong edition.

I'm using 4th Edition. Page 235 of SR4: "Registered sprites conduct remote tasks just like unregistered sprites, but the sprite does not dissipate after 8 hours and so can continue on for some time. A registered sprite that still owes tasks will go on standby when it finishes its remote task, unless specifically instructed otherwise."

Wait wait wait, back it up.

Sprites owe favors based on Compiling (SR4A page 240, Sprite Tasks, second sentence). Now go to next page, third paragraph, first and second sentence. Continuously using a power remotely costs only one service, exactly as you state, but when the parameters for that service change, a new Task is required.

So yeah, you can have the sprites operating in the node, but when they enter into combat the parameters have changed and it requires a new Task. Or if they're engaged in combat and then the opposition is nullified... the parameters are now different, new Task.

Per 8 hours (SR4A, page 241, first paragraph, first and second sentence).

You'd have to be clever with your wording of the Task to get them to go into and out of combat without the parameters changing, and even then you'd only potentially be good for 8 hours. The next time you need Sprite-infused drones you'd have to get new Tasks owed - which is the point I was making. After that initial combat that you've done days of hospitalization to set up you're out of luck.

Part of my problem is probably coming from the fact that I'm using the older SR4 book, not SR4a. In SR4, the 8hrs rule only applies to Unregistered Sprites. I would also argue that the Sprite is not engaging the combat, the Drone is, and since the Drone is being piloted by the Sprite per its task, the Drone is still being Piloted per the initial task and therefore the params aren't changing. This is why I asked in another thread about what constitutes a service and how that would apply to skills. The Sprite doesn't even have to use any powers, just skills/CFs.

In that case they'd be handled similarly to spirits in combat. They're supposed to be the TM version of spirits anyways.

The 8 hour rule was kinda changed for Registering sprites insofar as it is now the limit of a particular service as opposed to the entirety of the sprite itself.

You want to get really silly, there's a simple combo of spirit powers in the 5e Street Grimoire that effectively lets runners get Essence and Karma theft powers loaned to them by spirits, thus making for a mage who bypasses running entirely, drains 1 karma each from an entire stadium full of, say Urban Brawl fans, and ascends Dragon Ball Z style. Everyone involved just notices they're a little extra tired when they get home that night, and thinks nothing of it.

You can steal Karma in 4e, too, but iirc it's painful to the recipient. I had a concept character I never played who knocked people out with stun damage and drained them at his convenience.

That existed in 4th Ed.

every 3rd dice roll is a success.



Fire Spirit has 9 Reaction plus 7 Intuition = 16 dice = 5.33 hits



Body 7. Plus 6 auto hits. Plus 12 armor



Agreed. Not special.

However TacNet is non standard. Also the Spirit will be either running at you or be in close combat with you or somebody else (in which case you will not shoot him because if you miss you hit your friend). So lets leave it at 16 dice, although the 2 dice dont make much of a difference.

16 dice = 5.33 hits which means that sometimes you hit him sometimes you dont. (roughly 35% chance, because no hits on draw with the gracing hit rule)

If you hit him, the majority of the time it will be with 1 or 2 net hits.



Elemtal damage does not work against Immunity to normal weapons.

Lets look at some weapons:

Immunity to normal weapons rating 12 (Force 6 Fire spirit) with 1 net hit (which you will get about 20% of the time, 65% off the time you will miss, 10% percent will be 2 hits, 5% more)
your damage + penetration will need to be 12 (you need to exceed).

SMG: 7/0 -> no damage
Shotgun: 10/-1 -> no damge
Assault rifle: 10/-2 -> damage
Assault rifle: 11/-2 -> damage
Sniper rifle: 13/-4 -> damage
LMG: 9/-2 -> no damage
MMG: 10/-3 -> damage
HMG: 12/-4 -> damage
Assault cannon: 17/-6 damage

But how much damage?

The spirit with immunity has 6 auto hits on the resistance test, 7 body and 12 dice from immunity that gives you, with 1 net hit a a damage of:


Assault rifle: 10/-2 = 11 damage -6 auto hits - 17/3 = 0 damage
Assault rifle: 11/-2 = 12 damage -6 auto hits - 17/3 = 0.33 damage
Sniper rifle: 13/-4 = 14 damage -6 auto hits - 15/3 = 3 damage
MMG: 10/-3 = 11 damage -6 auto hits - 16/3 = 0 damage
HMG: 12/-4 = 13 damage -6 auto hits - 15/3 = 2 damage
Assault cannon: 17/-6 = 18 damage -6 auto hits - 13/3 = 7.66 damage

Note that you do this damage only 35% of the time, but you can use better ammo.

Remember to bring heavy weapons, preferably assault cannons everywhere, because a force 6 spirit can be summoned everywhere out of fresh air. Forgot to bring at least a sniper rifle? Screwed! Good luck with security.

Then the spirit starts attacking you.

Either melee engulf with 14 dice or a ranged attack with 14 dice. Damage is 12P/-6 (thats sniper rifle class).
You cant attack it in melee or you get 12P/-6 damage. If you stand and hoot you are in melee and get dice pool modifiers. If it hits you, you are on FIRE.

So, the summoner is sitting around somewhere. Lets give him 10 dice for summoning and 10 for drain resistance. Average standard starting mage.
Spirits gets 2 hits in summoning, caster gets 3.3.
Caster gets 4 drain and reduces it to 0.66. If he is somewhat competent he has 12+ dice and reduces it to 0 on average.

So he starts slinging MORE and MORE (lets say 5 or so) spirits at you. (all on away service, combat)

If he decides to go wild and use Edge to summon a level 8 spirit, you are now looking at the following:

Reaction 11, Intuition 9 = 20 dice for dodge

Immunity to normal weapons 8 (exceed 16)

SMG: 7/0 -> no damage
Shotgun with apds: 10/-5 -> no damage
Assault rifle with apds: 10/-6 -> no damage
Assault rifle with apds: 11/-6 -> no damage
Sniper rifle: 13/-4 -> damage
Sniper rifle with apds: 13/-8 -> damage
LMG with apds: 9/-6 -> no damage
MMG with apds: 10/-7 -> damage
HMG: 12/-4 -> no damage
HMG with apds: 12/-10 -> damage
Assault cannon: 17/-6 damage


So, what damage do we get against 8 auto hits, 9 body and 16 armor?


Sniper rifle: 13/-4 = 14 damage -8 auto hits - 21/3 =0 damage
Sniper rifle with apds: 13/-8 = 14 damage -8 auto hits - 17/3 = 0.33 damage
MMG with apds: 10/-7 = 11 damage -8 auto hits - 18/3 = 0 damage
HMG with apds: 12/-10 = 13 damage -8 auto hits - 15/3 = 0 damage
Assault cannon: 17/-6 = 18 damage -8 auto hits - 18/3 = 3.66 damage

But can you hit him? he has 20 dodge dice. Thats 6.66 hits on average. Do you have a weapon with accuracy 6+? If no, you can not hit him.
He can also go full defense and get +8 dice for all dodge tests for the rest of the turn.

and he attacks you with 18 dice and 16P/-6 damage. Good Luck.

And FORGET facing a level 10. Something a starting character can reliably summon with edge.

ONLY assault cannons can hurt it (0 damage on average with a 1 net hit hit, you need at least 2 to damage it). You can not hit it (24 dodge dice) and it kills you (attacks with 22 dice, engulfs you, does damage when you attack it in melee and does 20P/-10 damage you are on fire).

Every effective starting mage can summon hordes of F6 spirits. So thats not uncommon. There is no way to stop a player to do it if he wants to.



What inherent limits? As long as spirits are on away services you can have enough to turn it into a problem. Background count is there but on average you have a background count of 0. How often do you have background count? More than 50% of the time? Must be a strange world. Even if you have 1-2 thats 1-2 dice less. No big thing.



You cant detect them until they are summoned or called in a complex action. The Sam has to bring his assault rifle through security, the mage does not. Thats an extream drawback for the Sam, that mage simply does not have, for any of his powers.
And you can not prevent him from summoning. The moment before there is no spirit and you dont know that he is summoning anything, the moment later, the spirit is there. There is NO warning time. And you can not run from the spirit, he simply follows you on the astral.

How good is all that combined? And mages get it for free, WITH all the other powers of the spirit. What do mundanes have? Drones? Not as stealthy, not as cheap, not as powerful, can be hacked, can be jammed, not as many other options. Have you looked at task spirits lately? A Mage does not even need skills any more other than magic skills. There was one area a mage could not do much, that was technical skills. This is now filled by Task Spirits.

Wards are the ONLY thing that remotely keeps them in check.
But as I said, physical plane can be countered by magic, but magic can only be countered by magic. You have no mage in a group facing a mage (ok, not one that is standing right before you, as I said a standard mage with intelligence more than 1, so he will hide some kilometers away before he is sending his spirits to kill you, although he has also some other tricks if need arises . . .)? You are screwed. With a hacker you can at least turn everything off.

If you have a mage player in your team that wants to make a show, there is no stopping him.

....

What edition are you playing? It obviously isn't 4th Ed, and all my numbers are for 4th. 4th Ed ItNW does NOT grant automatic successes on Damage Resistance Tests, and the 4 dice = 1 success is an optional Success Buying rule from War! that I was operating with, not a "3 = 1" that you did. I also specifically only used Force for all stats since there is a modicum of difference between all spirits, so for the base line it would simply be Force.


Umm... No, it doesn't bypass ItNW. But ItNW grants a certain amount of armor, and Elemental damage has -1/2 AP, so it automatically halves ItNW. Like I listed.


SR4A, page 188, Summoning, fifth paragraph. Those limits. If you've never seen those rules before that explains a hell of a lot. Oh, and Ritual Summoning Materials, same book and page, Binding, first paragraph, third sentence.


I don't know where you got this raging hard-on for magic, but it's unwarranted if you're playing by the rules. There are so very many variables present that you cannot simply state a mage is an "I win" button, or that a hacker can turn off all the drones present.

Go read the rulebooks again. Spirits are vulnerable - even your math showed some weapons could kill them with easily attainable stats (which, by the way, you challenged that I couldn't and then even you agreed the math was there). Hackers do not automatically dominate drones - you can be running in Hidden Mode, delaying the hacker from even starting the hack; then you can be slaved, routing the hacker to a more secure node that he has to hack (which, if it's outside the hacker's signal, he simply can't hack); then you have to deal with Encryption, which can be Strong Encryption, where each Test to decrypt it takes up to 24 HOURS; then you can finally use Edit/Exploit/Command or what have you. Assuming you don't set off an alert and the system goes into a reboot, which restarts the whole process.

You view things only as overpowered if:
1) Mages have no limits on the number of spirits they can have.
2) People don't/can't target the mage instead of the spirits.
3) There's no such thing as BC or Arcane Arrester.
4) All devices are on Active or Passive setting.
5) No one slaves drones.
6) Everything is within Signal limit of each other.
7) Nothing is Encrypted.

In those cases, yes magic is phenominally powerful and hackers are the kings of the physical plane. The problem is that that is most certainly not the same reality virtually every table excluding yours plays in.

EDIT: Oh yeah, you also must be assuming that Mages don't experience Drain from summoning/binding spirits. Every chance you get to get favors from that F10 spirit you're having to deal with using your 3 = 1 math) 6 physical damage. I hope you can mitigate that every single time.

And that brings up the Resources issue from earlier also. How much preparation and resources have these mages sunk into making sure they have "hordes of F6 spirits?" Every Binding ritual is 3k and being the subject of 4S drain. Walk it off for a couple hours, then spend another 3k and get 4S damage. So yeah, under those less-than-realistic conditions, a mage that has had weeks to prepare for any opposition and who's carefully planned out exactly what he'd do in the event of a security breach is a tough cookie.

That doesn't mean all mages do that. Not all mages have access to the same resources, not all mages have the time required to set that up, not all mages will be found or fought on their home turf.

Apparently you don't know 5th edition. If you base your arguments on 4th you should explicitly state so as its not the current edition.
When I asked fofor math I explicitly mentioned 5th.

All my math is correct in 5th.

Furthermore 1/3 hits is also the average hit ratio in 4th (am I really typing this?)

Read my statements about how drain is calculated and force 10 summoned (you need only one of those, costs 1-2 edge). You don't need to bond spirits if they are on away service.

All your other points simply blunt the blade.

Mages have by far the best package concerning power, versatality, uniqueness, stealth and abilities. You can give counter examples for corner cases and remedies against total magic domination, but on average the mage is by far the most effective one man shadowrun group, that can handle almost everything himself.

No, you did not explicitly mention 5th Ed.


SR4A (because remember, I was working with 4th Ed), page 62, Buying Hits. 4 to 1.


Unless 5th Ed changed it where Unbound Spirits still count against the limit of spirits a mage can have, it doesn't really matter if it's a Remote Service or not. You're still only allowed one Unbound Spirit until the services are complete.

And you're just compounding the resources with the expenditure of Edge now as well. As much as you try to argue "it's fine, see look!" you only are showing us that you're moving further and further into the realm of unsustainability.

Look further. I wrote:

Did you do the math of a force 8 fire elemental in 5th edition lately?



But in REALITY every 3rd roll is a hit. (I am really wondering, do I have to explain that?)



That was actually disputed in 4th (there is a thread about that in here) and was changed only in 4A. They actually forgot it in 5th. But thats not the points. You wait till your spirit is dead and then you send one more and one more and one more. As I calculated in my post, an very basic mage can afford to summon 5-8 of force 6 spirits.



I wrote:
And FORGET facing a level 10. Something a starting character can reliably summon with edge.

Please read before posting.

Huh, if someone's device is slaved, I thought they sort of "piggy-backed" through the device to access the Master node. Is that not how it works?

Not sure how it works in 5th, but in 4th it redirects hacking attempts to the Master node.

Right, but does it redirect through its own connection, or do you have to establish your own (potentially out of range) connections using your own signal? It seems like it should be the former, especially if, for example, you're a TM using Skinlink to access a node that redirects you to the security node of the facility. Like how you move/connect through the Matrix.