Well, if it says that "normally" drain cannot be healed, then there are occasions when it can be healed.

I must admit that I have missed the posts from the writers that say that drain is not meant to be healed.

I have no problem with stun being unhealable, but do have a problem with physical drain being unhealable. If you can heal someone from the point of death, where they have taken 10 rounds from a Heavy MG to the chest, then I have a problem with not allowing someone who has internal injuries/bleeding from overcasting.

If this get's answered in the FAQ, or Errata, then I will re-visit my view point, and, will do the same if my players start to abuse it.

It's healable, just not by magic. Evidentally the drain scars the system in some way that prevents the accelerated healing afforded by magic. You can still use first aid to help remove some/all of the damage.

And for metagame reasons it prevents mages deciding to always slightly overcast and rely on healing to remove any drain that sneaks though.

I am going to be difficult.

Synner's comment didn't specifically address overcasting / physical drain
Synner just mentioned drain. Drain, normally is stun damage, which cannot be healed (unless you use the adept power).

I will feel more comfortable (will admit that I was wrong, but with lots of kicking and screaming) when the FAQ comes out and does spell out that overcasting/physical drain cannot be healed.

Meh. It's your game.

edit: Sounds like a guy in my game that ends every rules argument with "You're the GM, if you want to houserule that way, fine!"

I know, I know, I know, this goes on forever.
Maybe it's cause I play a shitload of DnD and just like cyberware.

And someone already said that Mages take FOREVER to be able to get any skills. My character already has the skills, and skillwires. He had them on his first run. And he spends a lot of time stealing skillsofts on the Matrix, so he has a massive dice pool for everything, without foci, without vulnerability to any character type, without spending Karma or Nuyen.

I like that. I guess Steak and Spirits doesn't.
Hey, man, the world don't move to the beat of just one drum.

No, no. You miss the point of my Satyr. I very much prefer Samurai.

From a -thematic- standpoint.

When it comes to evaluating what they've really got going for them, though, I'm really left wondering what niche they really fill except for filling a niche until someone else can do it better.

Re: Cyberon

I got the 6 base damage from plugging a number in without looking it up - my bad.

While you can't go on full defense against magic (except for indirect combat spells, which you can) you can get a mage with counterspelling - which is more effective than full defense, because it doesn't matter how many people are being defended or how many times spells have been tossed at them that round - they get the full value every time (none of this decrement for each attack normal defense suffers.)


As for the mages are all that and a bag of chips arguments...

Who's giving the mages 2x as much bp or karma as the mundanes? (Because if they have the same amount to spend, they either have all the skills and equipment that a mundane has, or they are effective spellcasters and/or summoners. Mages have an extra stat and nine extra skills (2 skill groups of 3, and 3 non-grouped) that mundanes don't have to buy up.

i see this same argument in 3rd ed--the whole "mages are overpowered because they can do anything anybody else can do, plus they can do magic!" thing. and yet despite that, in almost ten years of playing 3rd ed, i have yet to see a mage that can perform as well in any area as my non-mage specialist characters with equal karma and nuyen, while still being good at standard mage stuff like protecting against hostile magic. maybe that's changed in SR4; maybe the balance has been thrown so far out of whack that mages really are the uberl33tezt characters and there's no reason to play anything else. i doubt it, but it's possible.

the reason mages aren't all that and a bag of chips is the shortage of karma and money. SandS is, for some reason, assuming that mages have unlimited access to both--infinite karma and nuyen on-hand to fund initiations, learn spells, raise all kinds of skills, buy and bond foci, etcetera. in a reasonable game, mages are severely limited in their ability to progress. they can raise their sorcery skill, but that leaves them with nothing to initiate with. they can initiate, but then they don't have karma left over to raise their magic. they can raise their magic, but that leaves nothing to spend on learning new spells, binding foci, and so on.

so, yes, SandS, in theory, mages are the master-of-all-trades badassest characters in the book. theory is a nice place. i like to spend time there, because i can do things there that don't actually work in real life.

so, let's put this in terms of those pretend conversations that everyone is posting.

>Street Sam: I can kill people with guns and pick electronic locks and see in the dark and sneak around and do karate chops and climb stuff!

>Mage: Yeah? Well I'll be able to do that, too, and better than you, once I get about 500 karma and a few hundred thousand nuyen! By which point, of course, you'll have upgraded your 'ware, stats, and skills and become proficient in even more areas.

My point was more that the system has balances for things. Yeah, a mage can do nifty stuff, but then there's other mages, wards, etc. A sam can do lots of stuff, but there's MADs, 'ware scanners, etc.

I've never, as mfb points out, had any issues with mages suddenly making the entire team irrelevant. Other mages maybe, but that's because they were overlapping and one guy was a better minmaxmunky.

And I've also not seen a whole lot of evidence to support the notion that the only way to combat a mage is a mage. Bullets to the face, as I mentioned, work wonders. (And while I'm joking there, tactics can go a long way towards making a mage much less of a threat.)

three counterwords:
karma
and
money
!!

No one is saying that you don't need mages.

But the fact that you need mages to put up wards has not a thing to do with samurai.

Otherwise, I'd be saying that a samurai can simply shoot the mage at 2000' with a scoped sniper rifle twice per pass.

"Oh," you say "but there are buildings, obstacles, sight lines!"

"Ah," I say "So you admit you need a mundane to counter a mundane?"

And yes, you can say "Ah, but my mage can just buy 6 in architecture!" But then we're back to that idea that a mage can have all their stuff, plus whatever they want. A mage that buys 6 architecture isn't getting anything else at the time.

And seriously: Look at the focus addiction rules in Street Magic. They're nasty. To the point of taking a -1 penalty to all rolls at minor addiction, where you use your foci reflexively. The mage with 5 active spells at all times should really be suffering. If they aren't, again, ignoring rules makes everyone more powerful.

Honestly, I really can't stand the "My character is better than your character" debates that spring up in every genre. It's always "Oh yeah? Well, I'll do X, and then ha ha!" "Oh yeah, I Y!" "Oh, nuh uh, I Z'ed first!"

Show me the mage with equal karma and bp and resources that can seriously out perform the Sam.

I agree that Sam have been relegated to a more generalist role now - their true value is shining in multiple aspects.

I just had a long conversation with the mage player in our current game, which is on session 3. It basically went "I hate my mage. Is there a thread on Dumpshock about how overpowered guns are?" So.

Heh. Did you point him towards this thread?

How much does it cost to get *somebody else* to drop a quickened spell on you?

If there are no guidelines, should that be roughly cash for karma amounts?

The way I see it is that, outside of destroying spirits, mages are only really useful if they have planning... which they're able to do easily with astral projection, detection spells, and divinations. In straight-up combat, they will lose against a rigger or a sam, but they have the best scouting ability of any class, and they have the best tricks of any class. Tricks are more important in SR than anything else.

Without pre-cast sustained spells, a mage will lose in a gladiator-type fight against a street-sam, but if they were both put at random points in a city and told to find and kill each other, the mage would win because he could just have a spirit find him with Search, sneak up behind him with Physical Mask on, and Deathtouch him. And if it's an abandoned city, he could astrally project and annihilate him with a force 8 summoned spirit. It's all a matter of preparation.

Since we are back on the subject of healing physical drain...

In SM, there are two adept powers that relate to healing drain, Emphatic healing, Pain relief.

Emphatic healing transfers 1 point of damage per 2 combat turns. Power costs .5 magic

Pain Relief get's ride of 1 point of stun damage per 5 minutes. Power costs 1 magic point.

If you can't heal stun drain, or physical drain, then the powers should be more in line for both cost and duration.

Adept trransfers over 6 points of physical damage that the mage received from overcasting. Mage heals the adept. Time taken 13 combat turns.

Adept relieves pain on the mage, removing 6 points of stun damage. Time taken 6 minutes.

This leads me more towards that physical dran can be healed.

Mistwalker I would agree that physical drain can be healed in this way, because the powers do not state that drain damage can't be transferred. When the damage is transferred it is no longer drain damage. At least that is the way I read the fluff. This is also a lot less abusable than using the heal spell to directly heal physical drain. I don't care whether someone believes healing physical drain is RAW or not, it is very obvious that this is an abuse. Even if the rules stated very clearly in RAW that physical drain can be healed, I would still be against it. I think we should forget about what he/she thinks the rules say and look at this with common sense. Even if it was the intention of developers to have physical drain healed(I doubt it), I would see it as a mistake on their part and so should anyone that wants a fair and balanced game.

By transferring the damage you are not healing it. The damage still exists, it is just under a new person. The way I read it also is that the damage transferred is just stun damage or just physical damage. In other words it isn't stun drain damage or physical drain damage. Though this is really open to interpretation. I would have to admit on second thought when looking at the spirit of the rules and not the literal, it seems much more likely that this type of "round about way" of healing drain would not be allowed.

I will take another stab at this.

p167, Drain

Not only that, people are taking Synner's post out of context. Has anyone actually looked at the context of Synner's post and what he was replying to. The whole post is about a GM's player overcasting so that he can heal physical drain damage. Synner then responds with that. Physical drain isn't mentioned because the context was already established. IT IS AXIOMATIC for crying out loud! That is why he didn't specifically state it, because it was already stated and this quote was made in reference to physical drain damage.

For those who want to actually put it in context here is the full post. Please correct me if I am wrong.

http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?showtopic=14405

It could be argued either way.
The post above Synner's is:

... Until they come up with a new way to remove damage from a character, whereupon there will immediately be a thread debating whether it works with drain.

Probably, but you will notice that my sentence wasn't all inclusive, it just included the 3 current magical ways of healing.

It would set a precedent.