How do you keep from getting mind-raped by magicians with mind control spells? It seems like you could just have one dude walk in on your whole team of 'runners, drop a mass-suggestion spell, and order everyone to surrender.

I mean yeah, that's what magic support is for on your team, but what if your group doesn't have a caster? He's passed out from drain, got himself killed already, he's in another room, etc.?

I just don't see how a non-awakened character is supposed to deal with stuff like this. There's not even any kind of "mental discipline training" in the martial arts rules to help people resist this sort of thing.

If a group of runners is clumped together (area effect spells have a radius, so they aren't as effective against foes that are spread out), lack magical support, and someone has the drop on them - then yeah, they are in trouble. The enemy mage could also drop a high-Force spirit or an overcast combat spell on them. This is a game where if you surprise someone or otherwise are the initiator of an attack, you have a huge advantage. Runners usually benefit from this, but sometimes have it happen to them.

Otherwise, even if friendly counterspelling isn't present, mental manipulations still require line-of-sight, have a radius of effect, suffer from visual or background count modifiers, have a cap on the spellcasting hits, and are resisted - possibly with the targets using Edge. The victims also get to make additional resistance rolls to eventually break free of the spell.

Mental manipulation spells are still potentially unbalancing, though. A lot of tables house rule them away completely.

Don't forget that mental manipultation spells are "highly illegal." So law-abiding mages won't use it against lawbreakers.

It's called "Mind Rape" for a reason.

That's pretty much true as a blanket statement in Shadowrun, ne?

Yeah a grenade in such a situation isn't fun either but hey, this isn't D&D and you aren't walking down a 10' wide stone hallway. Use tactics and avoid the situation.

/Magicrun

Honestly I just take mental manipulation spells off the table. Players who enjoy using them get absolutely irate when they are used against them so best to just kill the pissing contest before it starts.

Edge is the mundane's magic defense!

With decent attributes (in SR5; I really like how they made Logic quite important in that regard, giving more incentive to not dump-stat it for non-techy characters), you also have a fair chance to avoid spells, and even if they hit you, you will probably be able to break out after a short while (which, of course, can be bad enough).

I don't have a problem with these spells. And we use them on both sides. It's definitely scary, though, if the team's heavy weapon troll is being mind-controlled.

Bye
Thanee

^^^ This... SO Much This.

Our group tends to take a sauce for goose, sauce for the gander approach. Generally if the PCs use those spells then so will the baddies. If they don't use them the NPCs generally won't use them. Sometimes it still happens if it is a particularly bad baddie and the story calls for it but it's pretty rare. Honestly I find the spirits with their fear power or compulsion to be more annoying. Run into a bunch of bugs with fear and good luck staying in the fight without some drugs.

I guess the question is do you still allow Overcasting on MM type spells?

Let's assume a 4 Logic & Willpower for a more well rounded character, mages and more techy types may have better Logic but then mages also have spell defense but let's skip that for a moment, and a 5-6 edge because runners need it.

Average Joe Runner gets targeted by a Force 5 Mind Manip spell and the caster scored 3 hits.

Now the runner gets to resist and three hits doesn't look to bad to shake off when he is rolling Logic & Will power to reduce these, except that force of a MM spell inflicts a penalty equal to force.

So Runner is rolling 8 dice (Logic & wil) minus 5 so is rolling 3 dice so he should chip away at in fairly short order, less if he edges even once.

But suppose the caster decides to go all out and does Force 10, unless the Runner is able to spend Edge he is basically not breaking free ever because the penalty would negate his regular pool from Logic and Will and even tear a bit of anything from Edge out.

If they're close enough for a mass suggestion spell, he could also throw a bunch of grenades and possibly get a similar result. Not to mention that a good use of social skills could also cause runners to surrender.
Mind manipulation spells are powerful, but so are many other options available to runners and opposition. They feel more scary, but when you think rationally about them, they aren't that worse than other options out there.

(Reminds me of this little joke:
Street Samurai: "Hey mage, want to see my spellbook?"
Mage: "A spellbook? you?"
Street Samurai, drawing his Ares Alpha: "Here it is."
[he shoots] "Manabolt"
[he shoots a gel round] "Stunbolt"
[he shoots a grenade] "Manaball"
[he shoots a stun grenade] "Stunball"
[he shoots an incendiary grenade] "Fireball"
[activates the chameleon coating] "Invisibility"
[activates a built-in holographic projector] "Illusion"
[points it towards the mage and activates the laser sight] "Control Emotions: Fear"
"Hands up!" [the mage complies] "Control Actions"
[puts the gun away] "Control Emotions: Relief"
"And no drain at all"



One thing a mundane could have to protect from mind manipulation is to have glowmoss coupled to a light detector, when the glowmoss glows due to magical activity, the detector picks it up and the target's commlink sends a message to the user to warn him that he might be targeted by a spell and maybe he should double-check his intention in case it's a mind manipulation spell.
This could be coupled with some behavior analysis software that detects when the runner does something out of the ordinary. The "Virtual Person" AR software is unaffected by mind manipulation.
Rulewise (in SR4 at least), this gives the opportunity for the runner to roll another spell resistance test.

A drawback of this mechanism is that it might cause the runner to hesitate whenever he's targeted by a spell, no matter what spell that is.

Sure, that is possible. And with F10 you are probably pretty safe to negate the entire pool for the later rolls.

Still, there are plenty options here. First, you are not alone (hopefully). The mage who does this will suffer Drain most likely (F10 Control Thoughts gives a 9P Drain), and has to sustain the spell. This makes him far less likely to dodge bullets aimed at him by the poor mind-controlled fella's team-mates.

And then, as you say, Edge. Even if your pool is 0, with decent Edge, you can break out of the spell in one decent roll.

Bye
Thanee

I had the same discussion with our GM prior to starting the campaign.
In reality, during eight years of game play, eventhough my mage had Mob control from the very start, the spell was used ONCE - and it was so impractical for so many reasons that I never used it again. Maybe a single target version would work better (as you don't have to try to evade friendly targets from the area), but if you have a single target, you might just as well Stunbolt them and not worry about them slipping from your control.

This exactly. If a player gets too happy with them, I start using them against them. Generally they get the point.

This right here, is what makes that spell way too damn powerful. Get rid of that penalty and the normal 'Runner should have a good chance of resisting.

Erm... the penalty only applies AFTER the initial resistance roll. For the first roll you have your full attributes.

Bye
Thanee

I tend to take a page from the treatment of blood magic: Mental manipulations are stigmatized even among criminals, can only be learned if someone manages to find a tutor, , their very nature attracts a certain unsavory kind of person, and the simple suggestion that somebody is usng such magic should be enough to make all hell break loose...
Mind-controling magic means that all the insanity behind conspiracy theories and moral panics stops being insane: There are people who can secretly manipulate those in power. Any doubter might indeed be controlled by THEM. They might be trying to "adjust" your dissenting thoughts right now. And of course, think of the children! Accordingly, people should be sufficiently hysteric about the issue.

Especially if it can be done through ritual magic, so you might not even have to be in LOS to do it.

I'm pretty sure, as per canon rules, if you can get a lock on someone, either with a spotter or via material link, that you're not restricted to what you can cast on them with Ritual Spellcasting. Sure, you could fry them, but why not just...inspire them to reconsider their positions on a few issues?

Of course, I'll admit that I consider Emma Frost to be a role model...

Does not work the same in 5th Edition as it does in 4th, but essentially correct.

I really like the "social stigma" option; that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, it might happen, so try to be ready for it, but you should hardly ever (almost never) have it used against you... unless, of course, you did something stupid, like make a deal with a dragon.

I've been kicking the idea of making a Blood Mage around, though. They're just as bad, so to speak? My idea was to have the guy cut on himself to reduce drain while casting spells at people. Something about the metal image of this bare-chested dude carving up his own chest with a butcher's knife while laughing maniacally and hurling magic death at people gives me a giggle.

Or am I looking at more trouble than it's worth, in terms of not being able to find work or people willing to work with me because I use blood magic, do you think? Odd that I find a solution to one problem only to give myself another to worry about... lol

Blood mages are as bad because you can't get more power out of your own blood than is already in there. In order for it to be anything but a quirky way of casting, you have to start killing other people, and those are the ones that there's a bounty on.

Except you can use first aid and healing magic to heal the damage you inflict on yourself.

Sure, but it's also much weaker. As in 1 point of blood magic for 3 boxes of self-inflicted (or willing target inflicted) damage as opposed to 1/1 for unwilling targets.



Also, there's the issue that blood magic stains the aura in ways that anything dual natured will notice, and there is still a quite nice bounty out on blood mages. Enough that when your team gets hungry (or you get an Awakened Johnson who decides to have you black-bagged), they'll give you the old tranq patch back slap and you'll wake up in a mage hood on the way to the Draco Foundation.

Well drek. I thought it was 1:1 with self inflicted damage in 4th ed. Oh, well, back to my Raymond Redington character...

Even at 1:3 I think that it could be a very compelling character, if done right.