Okay, that does it.

I've been around here since the Deep Res forum first opened in various guises. In all that time and all those years, I have rarely if ever resorted to insults and character assassination. When I have, I have later apologized. The only time I did not apologize was when I was temporarily banned for being arrogant, which I will never apologize for.

But I'll be goddamned if I am going to sit here and take any crap anymore. I dare you to find anyone here who has consistently posted correct, cohesive, logical posts, often times with citations to the original source with as much depth and frequency as I have. I especially dare you to do so in the last three months, where the majority of my posts have included at least one reference to a SR book or other aspect of canon in an attempt to answer your* questions, because I am apparently a magnanimous idiot. Sure, I have attempted to add a measure of levity to some threads when it has been appropriate, or I engage in in-joke banter with some close acquaintances about a physad whose primary purpose seems to be 'punching bag' or about Nadja Daviar's dark brown nipples, but I have also spent hours writing out single posts describing such things as the DeeCee Sprawl with much better authority and detail than that fucking hack Steve Kenson ever did. I have been willing to admit myself wrong to the whole DS world when it came to SoE and in fact turned out to love the book and posted a rather long review of just one chapter because I felt it only necessary to explain why I did a 180 on the book and that specific chapter.

I have spent too many hours, blown off too many other priorities for this forum and to help you all out because I could, and my fall semester grades have proven that resoundingly. For the last five years, I have tried... God, have I tried... not to get involved in petty arguments, or character assassinations on this site. I have done my best to never step into a thread without being informed and bringing as much intellect as I could to a thread, especially the old Lounge threads, because to do otherwise is a waste of my time and all of yours.

I could defend myself if I wanted. I could tell you that I was angry and distracted when I wrote that response, and that it has been the cherry on the sundae of suck to events which have transpired for months that you did not know about, and never will, because I leave my life off this site, and I have done it for you all.

But I won't defend myself for that comment, or for any other comment I have posted over the years. The comment had information in it. The comment had ideas in it. The comment had a context of my complete lack of comprehension at the very nature of the conflict presented. But it was not some childish attempt at name-calling and insult, and it offends me to even be accused of making such a post.

I will not defend myself, to you Cynic, or to anyone here.

And, I will not waste anymore of my time on any of you here.


*"you" = all DS users.

You go Crimsondude, you don't owe anything to us bastards.

I have actually found your posts to be relevant, informative, and entertaining. Don't let the dregs get you down.

Hey Crimson, I like your posts. I find them valuable.

But school work should come first. I never graduated from anything after discovering roleplaying games. Keep your priorities straight, man.

Easy way to kill the mage. Small rigger spotter drone, something with a sig of 12. Big ship in the ocean, with a vaporizer railgun on it. Max range of 16,000. Battletac FDDM on ship, spotter, and riggers deck. Fire. Dead mage.

So does anyone have any more ideas on what mundanes can do to level the playing field against spellcasters?

Let's say, for instance, you have a world-spanning organization of magic-haters, trying to bring down the witchcraft using devils that are slowly destroying the moral fabric of the world. What do you do against such powerful opposition?

A few things that have been mentioned:

- camp out around backgroud counts and mana warps

- spotter drones and naval artillery

- ensure your bases are scout proof (easier if you use the 2nd ed. rule about projecting through living material)

- destroy the opposition's rep. They may have magical power, but you can try to prevent them from getting political or social power

- have the entrances to your bases rigged up to make passing through them invisibily much harder: 2' deep water in the hallways will be uncomfortable, but leave nice empty holes where the invisible guy is walking

- hit them through their friends and family. All the power in the world won't help you if you're afraid to aanything because the enemy has your mom dangling over a pot of boiling oil.

I think we can all agree that you can ramp up the power on enemy mages to challenge magically active and karmically advanced characters. Or combine spirits, magic, and assault weaponry to good effect. But what can us mundanes do?

"Us" mundanes can bomb them, rigger assaults are the heavy hand of mundanes. The best thing about the naval, is they're not likely to care about a little drone flying near them, if they are, theres not a whole lot they can do to affect it, other than mostly powerbolt or wreck(rotodrone). Powerbolts are rather hard to get to fully affect the drone, especially considering that the rigger will be going before the mage 99% of the time.

Which mundanes? PCs or NPCs?

NPCs...splatguns, smoke grenades, ruthinium.

PCs...splatguns, smoke grenades, ruthinium, and pocessing skills the mage doesn't.

Just read Trantual's post: I'd say your percentage is off. Most people around here favor a rating one Sustaining Focus for Improved Reflexes 3 right out of the gate.

Regardelss of where someone may perceieve his attitude I largely agree with everything that Crimsondude has said.

I have run campaigns past 300+ karma and the mages never really became unbalanced versus the other characters.

Pretty much every example of mages becoming horribly imbalanced has been the result of a GM not properly enforcing the limitations of the magically active. This includes background count, enemies, proper LOS, Alarm wards, destroying active foci from astral space, foci addiction, proper time spent to lear spells, proper time spent to aquire gear, Mana warps, astral shallows... The list goes on and on.

Even aquiring a force 14 conjuring library should be a pretty good pain in the ass, as should someplace to put a force 14 summoning circle, and aquire the force 14 summoning materials. The skill takes a boatload of time to learn, and should really take a mentor which would be nigh impossible to find and probably an adventure or two in itself.

To boot, while the mage spends karma on skills and spells and initiation, the mundanes are spending that on raw skills, meaning that for an equal amount of karma the mundanes should have significantly higher skills. Also, the mundanes by now should have had many, many opportunities to upgrade cyber and gear.

Also, in order to survive the harrier moments the team (and the individuals) should have blown a pretty sizeable amount of their karma pool, which should make it somewhat self limiting. At 100 karma in a campaign in my experience the karma pool is rarely over 6. In a 300 karma campaign the pool is rarely over 12. Mechanically the more karma they have the more lethal things get because there's a finer line between surviving and dying. Things that damage them are high enough power that if they don't dodge, they probably die.

On the issue of great dragons, just the fact they dragons may have a couple hundred karma pool and have been alive for tens of thousands of years means a team should never be able to reastically take one head on. It's their anchored, quickened and sustained spells that will get you. It's their divination. They know you are coming probably before you do. They are basically impossible to ambush because of that. Not to mention their karma warping abilites, where they can spend a karma pool to make you reroll all your sucesses. unless the GM is in fact incompetent (IMHO) a party stands absolutely no chance against a GD. These creatures are smart enough no human GM can realistically portray their intelligence. That's my main problem with using them. The players can outsmart the GM, but the characters can never realistically outthink a GD.

In our campaign, we are at about 150-180 good karma on average. The players average about 1 or 2 karma pool.

The mage, conversely, has none.

Bitbasher is correct. Most cases of overpowered characters are due to GM's not knowing the ways to counter the characters. They may be great GM's, just uninformed. Reading the first post on this thread reminds me of my first days GMing, when I didn't know the rules quite so well as I do now.

In my example, I meant for said rigger to have a VCR3. Besides, if you have naval weapons, you have a VCR3.

99% of the time is obviously a false statistic, but meaning the majority. In the instances in which the rigger doesn't go first, the mage can't do a whole lot to stop it. At best, they could powerbolt the drone, provided they know powerbolt at a high enough force to affect it. Hell, the rigger could just use 3 drones, that aren't close enough to ball all 3 at once. Done. Even if one gets fried, the other drones can easily get the lock, and then the ship shoots the mage.

I was just nitpicking your 99% thing.

Heh. Just to add to my side. The riggers minimum initiative will be 10+reaction. The mages will be 4+reaction. Which will usually go first?

Another rigger way to kill the mage. Run them over, with a vehicle. Sure, they might have lots of reaction and such, but if the vehicle just comes by, then splat, most mages don't have a vehicle barrier spell anchored.

Or better yet, a garbage truck.

Why am I reminded of the library scene from the first Ghostbusters?

We now add hit them with a car to the list.

Any other ideas?

Pickpokets.

Pickpockets definately has potential... that's a good suggestion. Stealing a well-protected personal foci may be a bit tough to snatch and would also be immediately noticed by the owner, but why take such a risk when there are other valuable and less secure items that the mage takes for granted? Especially if the runner is hoarding telesma and ritual materials. Units could simply begin 'disappearing' unless the PC begins allocating time and resources to the defense of his stockpiled resources to find out where his reources are vanishing to and it may even be a good month or so before he realizes what's going on... maybe some of his resources even get swapped for fakes to cover the thieve's track for the time being that might later end up on a botched ritual casting or summoning on the PC's part not knowing that he isn't using real ritual materials until the poo starts to fly.

Another one, blowgun with narcoject/atropine. Either 7D immidiate, or 7D every 15minutes until its purged out. Its a blowgun dart not a bullet, so bullet barriers won't help, and just do a called shot to bypass armor. I'd think a blowgun adept could get this done easily enough.

Another idea, give a kid a squirtgun, with DMSO & atropine/cyanide/narcoject, pay kid 50¥ to go squirt that guy.

Yet another one, have some woman attempting to seduce him, get offended, and pepper punch, lots and lots of pepper punch. Then the team shes working with comes in to get him, throws a mage hat on him.

Another, splat gun his face, hard to see through goo. Or freezefoam it.

Air-timed minigrenades anyone? Concussion ones can be nasty. Or flash/superflash.

Something else that might work, blind adept with all the blind swordsman style built up. And superflash packs in his eyes, walks up masked to mage, flashes mage to hell and back, then cuts mage in half.

gamma scopolamine - invented specifically to fight mages...added benefit of being a truth serum as it wears off...

Nitpick, no, gamma-scopolamine wasn't invented specifically to fight mages.

lets start with this one.every group is different but lets all conciede tothis point the average run makes you 4-5 karma points and should take on average 14 hours to complets if its roleplayed out.usually two game sessions for my group.second the average pay for a shadowrun suggested by fasa is 3x the average monthly upkeep of the group so conjuring a dorce 14 elemental is possible even with a target # of 14 though not practical.as a good dm one must consider how upset a elemental is when conjured.now lets put it in a scenario a mage has aquired the large conjuring circle and the material to do it which is feasable.hes just conjured a 14 fire elemental from its native plane suffered serious drain the elemental appears the mages friends aere here to protect the mage just in case . now comes the actual roleplaying part to the whole mechanics of the game {14 fire elemental thats uber bad really tough it also now sees a very weakened magician that conjured him would the weakened magician really have what it takes to keep control in that brief instence?in my game maybe not thats the price you pay for dealing in magic that powerfull and creatures that powerfull.maybe once you keep control the second time you dont and it wipes out half your team youd think twice about doing it again.

now granted thats not exactly in the rules but hey doesnt shadowrun like all good games tell you to add or delete depending on your own group?

my point is this if your mages are lucky enough to stay alive for that many shadowruns again and again and again without being killed and you want to play with a little commonsence realism to it then adapt the game to it.

weve all heard or seen movies or read books about magic this powerfull being done the slightest thing gone wrong spells disaster for the party.was the conjuring done in a wharehouse during the 14 hours it took?why didnt the local gangers come by to see what all the commotion was ie..a blazing fire,large swimming pool being set up ,dumptruck of dirt being moved it ect.....maybe thats another table rule we have but the conjuring material must be proportianate with the elemental being conjured.how about lone star seeing the fire ect.....

as of multiple karma awards being used, our rule is this no downtime karma usage ,karma is used in the heat of the moment on a run when the stakes are high not again and again during downtime ....yet again just a party rule we have.

i think its been said already if your gm is uncapable of handling a group with that much karma he shouldnt because it wont be done realistically.

ive been dming various games for 20 years and have come across the gambit of groups and players and have seen a lot of it not all but a lot and anytime a groups upset beacause of game inbalance or specific character imbalance its usually traceable to the gm .....our groups been together for 10solid years and have realized if at anytime you forget the game your playing is a fantasy world where things fluctuate and are never constant and your stuck because the rule says so its time to take a break and remember why your playing.

So we've added various chemical compounds to the list. Thanks!

Keep 'em coming folks! It'll probably be 6+ months of gaming every weekend before the mage even gets anywhere near being more powerful than the rest of the party. Anmd luckily we've been blessed this time wit a mage whose player is not the "I have to super-power-game every character" type. But it never hurts to plan ahead.

How about a faerie assault?

You had me worried there for a bit.

I'm supprised no one mentioned having a Master Shedim possess his meat body while he's astrally projecting.

Master Shedim in a GD body does not have access to GD powers.

Faeries and Master Shedims? I know what the first are (but not if they're in Shadowrun), but I haven't a clue about the second ones. I'm still trying to catch up on my 3rd edition reading, so may not have reached the part where they're mentioned. Are they in MitS?

Shedim are in Year of the Comet; Master Shedim are in Threats 2.

They are nasty spirits that posseses the bodies of the dead. They're also a great way for a GM to really frag off an astrally projecting mage. Nothing's worse than returning to your body only find that there's a squater that just refuses to leave.

Further explanation, Shedim don't just possess dead bodies(they're the reason why cremation is now encouraged world wide, and morgues tend to be warded, with body lockers having sturdy bolts to keep people _in_), but _unoccupied_ bodies. Doesn't matter how powerful that mage is, if he doesn't leave his body protected or guarded when he projects, if a Shedim runs across it it's going to take it for a joy ride, and it's not going to want to give it back. Shedim also like to travel in packs. Bummer about that if you just wasted a security squad and some Shedim show up.

And as to why everyone is ragging on the GM in SB's example, around here we've seen quite a few problems of when characters reach a high power, as well as a lot of characters who didn't create such problems when that powerful or more. Essentially, it's almost always boiled down to things that the GM was doing wrong that allowed one character to get completly out of control.

and Faeries are in Shadows of Europe...they steal children and other nasty stuff...

<A newbie's thoughts- exuberance of the young and all.>

Wouldn't the Mage characters have personal weaknesses?

Hmm, the 7 deadly sins?

No one is invincible, you just need to use their overconfidence and strengths against them. Weave the spider web so that they deceive themselves. They will kill themselves if you let them. Egomania is a powerful weapon.

I was always told that to take someone very powerful down, you need to keep the trap apparently weak, simple, small and let the character or player kill themselves.

Also, there are creatures in the Astral Plane that are so ancient and so powerful that the signature one of these characters would leave, would be like a buffet for them, no?

hmm, I guess I could make a new Archetype, Demi-God Killer.

How many enemies do these people have? or if they are all dead enemies, then were are all the others that would take there place. How long can a mage stay awake? Constant weak anoyance, and no rest could weaken and carbon based unit.

Sorry, to babble. But, I thought free associating would be theraputic.

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I shall fade into the west , and remain, SaraMarr.

SaraMarr has it down.

Using the character's overconfidence against them is great, but the one element you forgot, is that whatever ploy you attempt, must be delivered at a time when it is completely and utterly unexpected.

Small, seemingly trivial things are the ticket (again, as you said). Like this:

You're infilrating a corp facility. Using your magic, and false I.D. badges you are able to get in completely un-noticed. You head to the only elevator that accesses the 30th (top) floor (not wanting to draw attention by taking the stairs).
Unknown to you, the corp knew you would be coming, and planned accordingly. You step into the elevator and press the "30" button. After the doors close, chemical sprayers activate, dowsing the character in DMSo and whatever else the GM deems appropriate for the plot.

Yes, good call Sara. Nice to see another Portland player. Our group meets in that area for gaming.