Hi all! I've always loved the Shadowrun universe but I've hit several problems with magic. I'm new to GMing (heck, playing the game) and this is what happened. After getting the melee and ranged rules down I studied magic and explained the rules to my friends. One friend found that if he took certain combinations of sustaining foci and spells, he could become improved invis, +6/6 armor, +4d6 initiative, +X to any stat he wanted, and flying forever...

Needless to say this just broke the game instantly and I fought for 3 hours tying to un-break it and I gave up. I'm hoping I'm missing some rules or something because magic just seems WAY too powerful, like as in you would need about 10 kilos of High explosive compound XI to ensure his death.. Anything short of that just tickles him.

I also have many more questions about Shadowrun and am hoping I can get some links to sites for further clarification on the rules. Thanks all!!

To start with, use Focus Addiction (Magic in the Shadows page 45). This rule is exactly designed for the problem you are observing. With this rule, a magician risks magic loss if he uses too many foci at once. A power focus does NOT increase the Magic Attribute, so it doesn't help you get around the Focus Addiction rule.

Double-check the force and number of successes for his spells that raise attributes.

Lone Star does have magicians on occasional patrol, or on their way to a crime scene, who WILL notice if a magician has powerful magic. It takes but a moment to stop and ask to see the permit for that powerful magic. (All spells with Force higher than 2 require a permit.)

Initiation (in Magic in the Shadows) allows a character to learn 'Masking', which can help a character hide his Foci and active spells. But only as many Force points of these as the magician has in Grades of initiation.

Powerful corporations and powerful people pay for protection against invisible flying magicians. Wards, watcher and spirit patrols, astral magicians, FAB I and II, biofiber, etc.

Active foci can be attacked from astral space by magicians, mana spells, and spirits.

There are places in the barrens where using 100,000 nuyen worth of foci will get you killed for the value of those foci. Have you ever seen an Adept with Astral Perception firing a rifle at an Invisible Magician?

SoulKage, either you missed something, or the force of the spells are extremely low as the power gamer inside me tells me that it's not possible to gather that much power as a starting character. Somewhere, somehow, there is a glaring weakness if that's a realitively starting character.

Firstly, how did the mage aquire that much karma/spell points to bond so many foci? Also, make sure he is not playing mix and match with his Sustaining Foci; each Sustaining Foci is keyed to a specific spell. Also, Sustaining Foci can only hold up to a force of spell equal to it's own force, make sure you've not missed that.

Secondly, take a look at the force of the spells he's casting, many are limited in some fashion by the force of the spells themselves (Inc Reflex is the only glaring exception that comes to mind). If he has a bunch of low force spells and the complementary low force foci, that's okay, but make sure he understands he shouldn't expect miraculous effects, or even the effects he would have gotten at a force of 6.

As this is an ooc problem, solving it icly isn't the way to go IMO. However if everything is perfectly legit, it may be you aren't used to some of the IC problems that come with being Awakened. Part of the power balance of an Awakened comes from the numerous pitfalls that inhabit their lives (the other part is the huge karma sinks). OurTeam and Fortune supplied a few of them (wards especially are the bane of the Awakened), here's two more ideas.

I want you to keep in mind background counts. Personally, in my Seattle, it is a rare event in which there isn't at least a count of 1. That +1 TN doesn't seem like much, but since it applies to damn near every single magical roll, it adds up. And heaven forbid if there's a higher count; a 3 or 4 (usually reserved for special reasons) can neuter the power of a starting mage.

And if you don't have Threats 2, at least try to find someone else's to read. In addition to having a bunch of cool ideas to steal, they have Imps. Imps are a foci abuser's worst nightmare: they steal control of the focus itself from the mage.

In the end, magic doesn't break the unduly break the game without a cause, and outside of extremely high karma games (hundreds of spent Karma), magic is ultimately balanced. For as many paths to power magic provides, it also provides that many pitfalls.

Remember that the Increase Atribute spell is actually Attribute specific. That means that you have to learn Increase Intelligence at force 6, then Increase Strength at force 6, and so on - don't let the players get away with telling you that Increase attribute is a general spell that they can learn once and "Presto - I'm Harlequin's long lost elder brother, honest..."

what you SHOULD watch out for is spells that are learned as exclusive or fetished... because technically you can learn them free at force 1 and 2 respectively.

actually fortune, I've been thinking about that, and I've really come to believe that it's intentional, designed to allow your mage some versatility, without sacrificing overall punch.

The only one that really bugs me is Increase Reflexes. If it was based on Force (as it is in my games) it would be fine. I can deal with things like Force 1 Mindlink, Camo, Invisibility, Oxygenate, etc.

actually the one that bothers me is physical camo. that can really cause some havoc...
especially in a sustaining focus built into the handle of your gun....at a legal force 2.

Looking at this character:

First of all, foci, as has been stated, have to be deactivated to pass through wards. Now, you could take your foci through a ward if they were powerful enough, but even if you bring the ward down, you have still alerted the mage who created the ward. In other words, you have set off the alarm. Also, remember that active foci can be attacked astrally, and that having more than (Magic x 2) in Force active at once can lead to foci addiction. Remember as well - he needs to spend spell points to bond all of these foci!

Improved invisibility is a resisted spell, meaning that someone who successfully resists the spell can see the invisible person. Secondly, it doesn't affect smell, sound, etc. Thirdly, it is a fairly common spell, and defences will be in place to deal with it. Dual-natured beings can see the character just fine, since invisibility doesn't work against astral sight. Also, guards get suspicious when doors open by themselves, etc.

Armor makes the character glow. It is like creating a neon sign saying "Geek me! I'm a mage!" You might justifiably rule that invisibility cannot mask the glow, since it it a light source. +6/+6 may seem like an awful lot of armor, but automatic fire can be pretty powerful. You don't need any contrived attacks, either - any punk ganger on the street could have a cheap, auto-fire capable, submachine gun. The biggest thing to remember is that the armor spell doesn't create hardened armor, so the best it can do is to lower the effective Power of an attack to 2. So, someone with a 4L holdout pistol could still maim the character if he got good enough rolls.

The initiative boost is not that impressive. +3d6, the highest you can go, only makes you about the same as a street samurai with Wired Reflexes: 2. And most decent sammies will be far above that.

Increase Attribute takes a lot of successes (2 per one point increase), and it uses the base Attribute as a TN - so raising a Willpower that is already 6 any higher will take some decent rolls.

Levitate is a useful spell, but remember that if an enemy mage sees him hovering 100 feet above, then successfully dispelling the spell or taking out the focus will make the character go SPLAT!


One thing to keep in mind about the basic rules is that they are geared towards creating professional criminals, hardened pros who have been doing this for awhile and are about to break into the big time. So starting characters can be tough (although SR combat is also pretty lethal, so they are not invincible by any means). The system that created this character can also be used to create brutally effective street samurai and adepts.

That would be an interesting effect of invis+Armor. A glow from no apparent source.

~J

Imps.

Or, you can talk to the player in question, explain to him that his use of the rules is causing problems within the game and ask him to kindly not try and abuse the rules to make his character the most powerful 10 times over. If he says no, tell him to not bother showing up for the next game session.

Derek

I had a similar problem a few years ago with one of my players. He had made a bet with someone outside of my game he could make a standard mage better at HtH than an adept.

He won the bet.

I ruled that the sheer amount of mana shooting through his body lit him up like a beacon on the astral, attracting all manner of magical beasties.

It just so happened my antagonists for this campaign were an organized crime syndicate suffering from HMHVV. Hee hee hee...

It is always better to talk to the player, first. For one thing, he may not even know there is a "problem", and may be happy to tone down his character if that will make it easier for you. After all, he's (as far as I know) not breaking any rules, or even doing any obnoxious meta-gaming or loophole-finding. He's simply picking a mix of foci to make himself effective in a number of roles.

It's easy enough for a GM arbitrarily kill a PC, but that's being unfair to the player, and is not usually effective at causing the changes you want. It will either make the player leave in disgust, or convince him that his next character needs to be even more munchkin, since the first one obviously wasn't tough enough.

How is he getting those stat boosts so high? In past threads where munchins have claimed to have done those and maxed the success in the downtime, I have scene response that ran the line of 'divide the downtime into 3 second turns and let him roll that many times.'

While talking to the player is pretty much a given, I still believe that the GM should know the system at least as well as his players. Sit down with the player in question and go through the entire magic rules with him. This isn't a bad thing to do with all the players, and something I do each and every time one of my players goes through chargen. It not only familiarizes the GM (and the player, if necessary) with the rules, but it gives the GM an intimate view into the character and his motivations...moreso than what can come across in a written background.

Ultimately I'm with Glyph. A little power is a good thing, not a bad thing. It's no fun to be forced to rob department stores or shake down ramen shops. Just build the resistance to deal with the char.

What kind of resistance could you have to a mage like that, that wouldn't also wipe out the rest of the team? Seriously, I think both the player and the GM (the latter in particular) need to review, well, let's be thorough and say the magic section in the BBB, Compaion, and MitS for good measure. The GM is obviously not prepared to handle what this player is doing, and I think the player, knowing or not, is breaking some important rules about magic use.

Astral threats.

~J

actually, you could just use the silly essence kitten from TSS, though it's not canon.
at least the feline would finally see some use.

It already had use: being cute and fuzzy.

~J

Soulkage: I did a bit of number-crunching, and it'd take 16 spell points for your mage to purchase each of those spells at effective levels. That means he needs to spend 32 spell points to have them all bonded into foci at chargen. Considering that he only starts with 25, he'd need to buy 7 spell points, at a cost of 175,000 .

Now, for the foci, he'd need to spend 240,000 to have enough to carry them all. That gives him a grand total of 425,000 , too much for a starting full mage using the priority system. He wouldn't be able to start with all that.

Now, if a player manages to earn all that in game, that's another matter. However, there's no way he can start with all that. I don't think you need to worry too much about focus abuse right off the bat.

Post his Character sheet. The Rule Lawyer in me so wants to rip this guys character apart while the metagamer in me wants to give him pointers.

I'm not sure there *is* a character sheet. From SoulKage's post I gathered that they were merely discussing theory, and a friend of his noticed that in theory, particularly with just the BBB and no other sourcebooks, mages and magic users are in general are more powerful than non magic-users.

Notes: I did not bother with the other parts of character creating since the focus here is magic. This is basically what my friend did on that dreaded day. He stated he will re-roll his stat foci until he gets the amount of successes he desires during his “downtime.” not to mention he’s improved invis and stealthed.. Even with only one spell, he has a large spell pool and willpower pool to pull from. His armor is way too high and thus even if I were to hit him with a full auto rifle, he could easily stage the damage down with his insane body and combat pool. And speaking of combat pool, he can pwn with that assault rifle, hell even his pistol! he’s got super fast initiative and all this just seems to powerful.. Granted some of your ideas are good and I’ll be buying MitS soon so I can be better equipped to deal with this situation. Thanks for all your input guys!

Using the BBB only:

A 1,000,000 Nuyen
B Aspected Magician (sorcerer)
C Attributes 24
D Dwarf
E Skill points 27

Combat Pool = 14
Spell Pool = 8
Reaction = 9
Initiative = 9+4d6

Armor Rating 13/10

Body 3 (2+1) (11) Boosted from foci
Quick 2 (9) “”
Str 4 (2+2) (12) “”
Cha 6 (9) “”
Int 6 (9) “”
Wil 7 (6+1) (11) “”
Essence 6
Magic 6

Knowledge skill points 30
Language 9

Active skills:
Sorcery (6)
Aura Reading (1)
Assault Rifles (6)
Pistols (5)
Launch Weapons (4)
Etiquette (5)

Magic Spells:
Increase Body (1)
Increase Quick (1)
Increase Str (1)
Increase Cha (1)
Increase int (1)
Increase wil (1)
Increase Reflexes +3 (1)
Improved Invis (5)
Stealth (4)
Armor (6)
Powerbolt (6)

Sustaining Foci:
Increase Body (1)
Increase Quick (1)
Increase Str (1)
Increase Cha (1)
Increase int (1)
Increase wil (1)
Increase Reflexes +3 (1)
Improved Invis (5)
Stealth (4)
Armor (6)


Total Spell points between Spells and Foci, 50


Armor:
Secure Jacket 5/3
Secure Vest 2/1

Weapons:
Soviet AK-98:
Tactical sling
EX Explosive Ammo
Smartlink
Shock Pad
Gas-Vent III
5 Extra Mags
3 Offensive mini Grenades
5 Defensive mini Grenades
Ares Viper Silvergun:
EX Explosive Ammo
Smartlink
Gas-Vent III
2 Extra Mags
Gear:
Smart goggles
Concealable holster for AVS
Clothing

As everyone surmised, there's a slight flaw in his plan: specifically the force of the Increase Attribute spells.

He also risks loss of Magic (Focus Addiction Rules) every Combat Turn where he uses more force points in Foci than twice his rating in Magic.

The limit to attribute rating and the problem of using too many foci were brought up as the first two issues in the first response to your post (5 minutes after your original post). This was 9 days before you posted his character. Perhaps our responses are confusing or unclear? How can we better help you?

He could fetish limit those Imp Attribute spells, which should give him 1 Force more. But that is it. His Attributes can all be only boosted by 2 maximum. Unless you have a house rule you haven't told us.

Thanks everyone, I think I see now.. the atribute thing was a bit messed up, I didn't see the atribute part in the BBB. And even though he can ligitly have 13/10 armor, he would be quite obvious that hes a mage and could be targeted from both the physical and astral plains. I guess as GM I have to find a way to balance their uber powers with the settings without making it look like I'm being a jerk. thanks so much for your posts!

One can have all the armor in the world, but if they don't have the body to help stage down the damage, they're in for a world of hurt in any event.

Plus he gets Combat Pool penalties and Quickness +TNs due to the mundane armor being over his Quickness. And the protection of the second piece of armor is halved, round down. He in fact has a 12/9 while wearing his "Hi, I'm a Mage. Geek me first." sign.

See pg 285 for the specific rules on layering armor and the physical penalties of wearing too much armor.

With his Quick spell up, he looses 2 CP, 3 if he doesn't have it up.

With his Quick spell up, he has a +4 to all quickness and quickness related tests. Without it, it jumps to 5.

And either way, the dude can't walk under his own power due to the movement penalty. {Best scenario is (Q:3 - 4) x3 = he ain't movin'}

EDIT: Just noticed a lack of Levitate. He ain't moving at all. And if he's claiming to be able to fly forever, he's smoking something serious.

Even if he dropped the second piece of armor and always kept the Improved Quick up, he'd be just barely able to waddle around {(3-2)*3}.

The character is an invisable lamp.

So does anyone apply the "layering armor" rules when using the armor spell? I can see where that would help this situation, or does that just apply to physical armor worn?

No. The Armor spell doesn't figure in the calculation of either worn armor vs. Quickness, or for the purposes of layering armor.

Don't forget the activation limit. He can only have a number of foci active equal to his Intelligence. It's on p 190, BBB, under "Activation"; there's no way he can be walking around with 10 active foci on at once.

I think clearing up the issue about the Increase Attribute spell takes care of the major issues - no insanely high Body and Combat Pool to stage everything down, so his armor (which is not hardened, remember) dropping a lot (but not all) TN's to 2 won't be enough, by itself, to make him invincible. His initiative drops, too, down to where he is behind the sammies again (or he should be).


I won't give him flak over it, though, since he's learning the rules, just like you. It could have been an honest mistake. I will give him kudos for finding one of the most optimal combinations in the priority system on his first try.

Although, anything with the million nuyen is pretty high up there in power by the end. It's one of the reasons sammies start out so powerful, 'cause they have exponentially more resources to start with than others. Of course without it the adept would beat any mundane sammie without even trying, so I suppose it balances.

Also, skills are linked to attributes to determine their costs. You use natural attributes for this, not cybered (bio is considered natural) or magically boosted. So He didn't allot enough skill points for his Assault Rifles or Pistols skills.

The only problem I can see with all this (as was kinda stated above) is springing "new" rules on the guy (i.e. rules you didn't know about before). This leads to bouts of "but we did it this way before, and now you're just changing things to suit you". Some people can get really persnickity when they feel they've done something awesome and someone else comes along and totally deflates it. Personally, I'd just be cautious (and maybe a little slow) on broaching these changes, it can save lots of hurt feelings, bickering, etc.

I have no sympathy for their feelings if they have no consideration for others.

Demanding that the rules allow them to become so overpowered as to impinge upon their friends' enjoyment of the game usually denotes a fairly selfish attitude.

Respect is a two way street.

In this case it doesn't really matter anyway. This isn't a matter of the rules being arbitrarily changed by the GM to the player's detriment, but rather the group not understanding the rules in the first place and making mistakes based on those misinterpretations. Now that most of 'em have been cleared up the game is more balanced and fair to all involved. I really don't see the player complainning when it's explainned that his broken combos are in fact not legal. I rather think he'd be relieved to know that the system isn't *that* easily broken by a newbie.

Somebody else probably also mentioned this, but your focus has to be as high as the spell you're trying to fit into it. So to get +2 to your body, you'd have to get the spell at force 2, and get the focus at force 2, and spend the karma bond the focus (2 spell points each), and roll 4 successes with your sorcery+magic pool dice.

Then, as soon as you hit a decent force ward (force6+), the ward will likely destroy the focus, wasting all the karma you spent bonding it in the first place. If the ward doesn't destroy the focus, it'll still probably deactivate the focus (and you're unlikely to be able to re-cast the spell while you're on the run without taking drain). And you've now notified the security mage that you're in the building.

Because your TN for attribute increasing spells is the base attribute, you'll likely get a higher final value if your natural attribute is lower (3), and then get the spell at force 6. If you throw your whole spell pool into the cast, you have a slight chance of getting 12 successes against a TN 3 (raising your body to 9). And since you can't have more points of active foci than twice your Magic, it leaves you stuck with just two of those at most.

If you wanted to pick a couple spells that are actually useful at low force, I'd suggest the following:

• levitate (1) [low force means you'll be slow, but can be a huge help getting over fences and stuff],
• invisibility (1) [it is a resisted spell, but you can throw so many dice at the spell that your successes will usually outnumber the opposition's],
• increase reflexes (1) [IMO a broken spell, gives mostly the same results regardless of force it's cast at],
• and increase will (1) [if, like most mages, you max your natural willpower, then your TN's 6 or 7, and you're unlikely to get more than 2 successes anyway].

None of these would survive walking through a ward, or a simple attack from a spirit or watcher pack, but they could be valuable is certain situations.

I've been meaning to ask - a number of times I've seen people mention getting a spell "for free". What does that refer to?