Hi All. Began running this semester again and one of my players blasted some of the opposition with a manaball. He swore up and down that the successes on his sorcery test stage the damage up while the resistence successes could stage it back down. I was under the impression that combat spells don't stage at all and you're either damaged or not.

Example Case 1: Staging:
Bob the Shaman casts a force 4 stunbolt at serious against Alice the Mundane. Alice has a willpower of 5 so Bob rolls his six sorcery dice and 2 from his spell pool against a target of 5. He gets 4 successes staging the damage to deadly and then adding +2 to the resistence target number for a final resist of 6D. Alice then rolls to resist the damage with willpower getting 3 successes, staging the damage back down to serious.

Example Case 2: No Staging:
Bob the Shaman casts a force 4 stunbolt at serious against Alice the Mundane. Alice has a willpower of 5 so Bob rolls his six sorcery dice and 2 from his spell pool against a target of 5. He gets 4 successes. Alice then rolls her five willpower dice against a target number of 4 (force of the spell) she gets 5 successes and resists the spell for no damage. Had sherolled 3 successes, she would have suffered serious damage as per the damage level of the spell chosen by Bob at casting time.

Anyone know which one of us is right or is it a matter of interpretation?

Combat spells stage up and down normally until the defender has one net success, at which point the spell doesn’t take effect at all.

~J

Spells can be staged up, but can be fully reistsed if the target can equal the caster's successes in the Reistance test.

Both of those examples are correct, actually. It's just that in example 2, had Bob been able to get 2 more successes than Alice, he would have staged the damage up to D. In example 1, had Alice achieved one more success on her Resistance test, she would have taken no damage.

[edit]

I can't quote a page number, but I believe the spell is Resisted first, then Staged.

So if Bob has four successes casting his 4M Stunbolt,, and Alice has four successes resisting, nothing happens.

If Bob has six successes on Casting, and Alice has 4 successes resisting, Bob's stunbolt is successful. Bob has two net successes, so the Stubolt now does S damage to Alice.

Spells are resisted first (subtract defenders successes from Spell Resistance successes), then staged (if applicable)

It's similar to the Dodge Test where staging is done *after* Dodging, not before. Subtract defender's successes before Staging

IIC neither is actually right. (The results are, how you got there is not.) Staging happens at the end of the whole thing, not after the sorcery roll. The following applies to combat spells, elemental manipulations are different.

Combat Spells:
1) Attacker makes sorcery roll and counts sucesses
2) Defender Makes resistance roll and counts sucesses
3) Compare net sucesses. If attacker has no net sucesses spell fails. If attacker has net sucesses spell is staged up for each two net sucesses.

Only melee combat has the damage staged up before the resistance roll. Ranged combat has the damage staged up after comparing attacker and defender sucesses and determining net. That's an especially important distinction in gun combat and in the case of elemental manipulations.

So in essence, if the caster has net successes, stage up as normal, but if not then the spell does no damage?

Yep.

~J

Attacker casts, gets four successes. Staged up twice. The defender gets a single success. If you apply staging first, the defender doesn’t stage down and takes both upstages. If you compare successes first, you end up with 4-1=3 net successes, which only stages once.

~J

I recently dispatched a powerful mage (Who was also the mark to assassinate.) by casting a level 1 Powerbolt at him with every die I could muster and it staged up so high it killed him. He didn't make a single success against Dif 1. ^_^ That and both my elementals were about to pummel him to death in the same action. My DM just said screw it, and mission accomplished. The man had no chance. It was hilarious!

So you folks out there that cast on someone in a similar manner as "slapping" them physically, be wary of how many dice you apply.

If you’re rule-of-1ing on 6+ dice, you’re screwed anyway.

~J

He was powerful in other ways apparently, remember different kinds of mages out there than ones that just kick your arse with finely selected Metamagics. My assensing of him before hand showed a huge number of elementals at his call and a high Magic rating. If he had been prepaired or not have botched so badly the battle would have hurt me pretty badly. Worse would have been if he had chance and all those elementals were the same time(Which was probable since he by record used Earth Elementals exclusively.)...one exclusive action later 8 elementals would be on top of the three of us who were killing him and his thugs.

It was dumb luck. All I had on that particular character was a lvl 1 powerbolt for offense...which is infact Espiritu my newfound drake. He was a corp Elementalist before taking to the shadows and that was his second run.

woah:

You'll have to give me some time. I'm looking but not coming up with it again. I'm sure I've seen somewhere that assensing could provide that information.

nifty thanks!

Just to summarize:

With Spells, you compare all successes before staging.
Page 183: Spell Resistance Test before Spell Effect.

With Ranged combat, you compare all successes before staging.
Page 113: Dodge Test and Damage Resistance Test before Determine Outcome and Staging.

With Melee combat, you calculate staging and possible raises to power level before the final damage resistance roll.
Page 123: Standard -- Counter, Stage, Resist
or Full Defense -- Counter, Dodge, Stage, Resist (p. 124 top left)

Right, because Melee is the only one where staging can affect the Power.