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Jrayjoker
As with all things shadowrun, the balance lies within the goals of the game. I personally would only take Enchanting for the purpose of making my own foci, etc.

And if my character ever made it to retirement he would have a very lucrative business to roll into.
Jrayjoker
Dancer,

The answer to your original question fall into two parts:

1) Knowing how to do something correctly is always better than using brute force and awkwardness to accomplish the same goal.

that being said,

2) Sometimes brute force and awkwardness IS the correct way to do something.


You really have to read the rules and effects for spells and their targets, etc. in order to make a reasonable decision on the force of each particlular spell. SOmetimes you want low force spells that won't be noticed, sometimes you want a big bang that has almost no chance of being resisted, the choice is up to you.
Dancer
QUOTE (Jrayjoker @ Jan 23 2005, 01:51 PM)
You really have to read the rules and effects for spells and their targets, etc. in order to make a reasonable decision on the force of each particlular spell. SOmetimes you want low force spells that won't be noticed, sometimes you want a big bang that has almost no chance of being resisted, the choice is up to you.

I think I've grokked that now. The Stunbolt goes at Force 6, so I can drop that charging troll right drekkin' now, whereas the Influence spell I plan to use on weak-willed receptionists and guards is only Force 1, since chucking 12 dice means it will still work on people with Willpower 4, and it will be much harder to notice. And some spells (like Healthy Glow) are always Force 1, since they're just inherently low-powered. Thanks everybody for your help!

My next question should hopefully be very quick and simple: Can you deliberately use more radicals than the Force of the focus you are crafting, in order to get the 'three materials' bonus on a Force 1 or 2 focus?

Also, while MiTS doesn't state it I assume the telesma for a Weapon Focus must contain at least one unit of Orichalcum? (Going by the cost of buying them, it looks like they should contain (reach + 1) units.)
toturi
Some people say that since MitS doesn't say anything about it, they assume that Orichalcum isn't needed. I would saying that barring any material to the contary, orichalcum is needed as per SR3.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (toturi)
Some people say that since MitS doesn't say anything about it, they assume that Orichalcum isn't needed. I would saying that barring any material to the contary, orichalcum is needed as per SR3.

Yes, if you exclude the fact that the rules for Enchanting, as written in MitS, do not mention that orichalcum is necessary for creating Weapon Foci, then the odd mention of it in a piece of fluff on sr3.191 means orichalcum is required. Or, as Doctor Funkenstein once said:
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein @ Nov 15 2004, 04:28 PM)
Look at it this way...

The fluff text is an observation. Due to the extremely high TNs and First Karma bonding costs inherent to creating weapon foci (keeping in mind that Reach has no impact on the enchanting costs), they noticed that just about every weapon foci they've seen have incorporated it into their enchanting. Why? Because it lowers the demands of the enchanting process significantly to do so, and helps reflect the insane prices they charge for them.

However, the actual rules for creating weapon foci have no such requirement despite that bit of observation.
toturi
The omission of orichalcum in MitS for weapon foci does not contradict SR3.

That part of the SR3 that you so insist is fluff is embeded in the same section as game mechanics for weapon foci. Following your reasoning, you could say that a weapon focus inflicting its base damage in both physical and astral combat is just fluff or that active weapon foci being used in astral combat is also fluff. Your rules seem to be quite selective.
Austere Emancipator
QUOTE (toturi)
Following your reasoning, you could say that a weapon focus inflicting its base damage in both physical and astral combat is just fluff or that active weapon foci being used in astral combat is also fluff.

No, you couldn't. Where rules concerning weapon foci being used in combat are dealt with elsewhere, it is also mentioned that they do their base damage (as opposed to just (Cha)M or something else) whenever that would be appropriate to mention. See e.g. sr3.176, the table Astral Damage Codes.

The rules concerning creation of foci and the use of orichalcum in the process would be a perfect place to include a game rule about orichalcum being necessary for manufacturing weapon foci, don't you think so? However, no such thing is mentioned anywhere in any of the rules that deal with the creation of foci -- or indeed even in the fluff that goes with the rules concerning creation of foci. So the only rules we have concerning the creation of foci in 3rd Ed SR purposefully omits this "requirement". What can we conclude from that?

QUOTE (toturi)
That part of the SR3 that you so insist is fluff is embeded in the same section as game mechanics for weapon foci.

The mention of orichalcum happens to be in a separate paragraph which includes only additional fluff about the substance, and the next paragraph is also fluff, this time about non-melee weapon foci. Unless you consider it a rule that orichalcum is a monstrosity and that rumors of missile weapon foci are present in great quantity.
mfb
i have to agree with toturi on this one. it says pretty clearly in SR3, in the same section as the rest of the rules, that orichalcum is required in all weapon foci. if that wasn't included in MitS, blame Kenson; he has a nasty habit of writing confusing material.
RedmondLarry
QUOTE (Dancer)
Thomas ... purchases 4 units of refined gold for 80,000 nuyen.gif . He works at alchemy for a 28 day circulation. ... Said Radicals have a market value of 720,000 nuyen.gif . ...

Why would Thomas ever want to go running?

The prices and/or the amount that can be produced in one month are simply broken. The GM in your game/campaign needs to correct the problem.
Dancer
QUOTE (Doctor Funkenstein @ Nov 15 2004, 04:28 PM)
Look at it this way...

The fluff text is an observation. Due to the extremely high TNs and First Karma bonding costs inherent to creating weapon foci (keeping in mind that Reach has no impact on the enchanting costs), they noticed that just about every weapon foci they've seen have incorporated it into their enchanting. Why? Because it lowers the demands of the enchanting process significantly to do so, and helps reflect the insane prices they charge for them.

However, the actual rules for creating weapon foci have no such requirement despite that bit of observation.


But if I was a (non insanely rich) Enchanter I wouldn't use Orichalcum unless I was enchanting a very high-Force focus. 1 Karma and a couple of days of my time is not worth 88,000 nuyen.gif . And given their effect on Astral combat, force 1 foci will probably be very popular (First bonding cost = 8, -4 for 3 radicals, -3 for successes on enchanting test = 1 karma). But a Force-1 sword Focus costs only 25% less than a Force-2, despite costing the enchanter one ninth the amount of Karma, indicating that the Orichalcum is a fixed expense.

Another quick question: How much Ritual Material can you make in (24/successes) hours? It says to use the rules for making Fetishes, but Fetishes are singular whereas ritual materials can vary radically in scale.
waftalia
i ran into this problem a while back where one of my players figured it out.inbetween each run the group would take enough time off to do the same process to make more money.i didnt really know what to do at the time.luckily for me the players got tired of it quickly seeing it for an apparent mistake by fasa.i never thought of local groups getting irratated by someone doing this ,thats a very good point.has anyone checked with fasa to see if thats what they intended as #'s.
cracky
I just started playing shadowrun. I have a good grasp of the rules but, I think I must be doing something wrong with the magic rules. Here's an example of how magic goes in my game and if anybody could tell me what I'm doing wrong it would be appreciated.

1.mage player chooses to cast manaball at serious force
2.mage rolls sorcery test and makes 2-4 successes on every person in 6 meter area(which always seems to be like 3 people at least).
3.all npcs make spell resitance test against force of the spell(6) using willpower(4) and fail miserably.
4.more then 2 net successes left, staged up to deadly.
5.all npcs in area fall over dead.
6.mage rolls to resist against force of spell halved (3) using some dice from spell pool also.
7.mage gets 6 successes, stages down to light damage.

Is this how it is supposed to work? If so is there any good ways to counter balance this?
toturi
Yes, that's the way it works. Not much, that's why you geek the mage first.
Fortune
Any magician against purely non-magical opponents usually does alright. It's when they are facing other awakened beings that they run into more problems.
Dancer
QUOTE (cracky @ Jan 24 2005, 08:03 AM)
Is this how it is supposed to work? If so is there any good ways to counter balance this?

A mage can take down a mundane pretty quickly. But the mundane can take down the mage equally quickly - with a mage's generally poor Body and lack of cyberware, a single smartlinked recoil-compensated SMG burst and it's all over.

Mages also really suck against combined magical/mundane forces. A mage on the other side can counter and dispel all his spells, leaving him ineffective and vulnerable to physical force. Of course, he should be countering the enemy mage while the team sammie takes him down.
Dancer
Am I right about how Elemental Manipulation spells interact with Object Resistance?:

Thomas has a Force 2 Fireball spell, which he lobs at Joey the Ganger. Thomas rolls many successes on his Sorcery test, and Joey is blasted into a pile of ash. Joey's polyester muscle shirt is untouched by the conflagration, since its Object Resistance of 5 is more than twice the Force of the spell, and it flutters down like Obi-Wan's robe to rest on the ash heap. If the spell had been Force 3, it would have been vaporised along with Joey.
SentineloftheMountain
QUOTE (Sabosect)
QUOTE (Dancer @ Jan 22 2005, 09:06 PM)
Check my numbers here:

Thomas is a fairly new mage, with Enchanting 6 and a Karma Pool of 1. He rents an Enchanting Shop for a lunar month for 2800 nuyen.gif ,  and purchases 4 units of refined gold for 80,000 nuyen.gif . He works at alchemy for a 28 day circulation - 6 dice at Target 4, rerolling failures once, averages 4 1/2 successes, for an output of 18 units of Gold Radicals. Said Radicals have a market value of 720,000 nuyen.gif . Disposing of them won't be trivial, but given that he obtained them by entirely legal and above-board means he should be able to get a good fraction of market price in time. Say he gets 2/3rds market price - that works out to a little over 15,000 nuyen.gif pure profit a day. With a little more experience (Enchanting 8, Karma Pool 3) he gets 24,000 nuyen.gif a day.

Why would Thomas ever want to go running?

Because magically-powerful groups don't like it when upstarts move in on their turf. Thomas comes home one day, finds a mysterious package, and the following week the city is filling in the crater to build a new apartment building where his shop was.

I just recent did this with a character I'm running in my campaign and created some circulations during his downtime training period. You are right. Assuming the character's enchanting skill is high(6+) you can generate a lot of radical units; worth about 700k nuyen.gif a batch.

In my campaign we are using the cash for karma rule which is why I created the circulations in the first place; to get more karma for other things like a familiar, new spells, and other magical gear.

The GM also allowed me to improve my talismonger contact to a level 2 contact; on the way to a level 3 contact. My character basically became a major supplier for the talimonger's magic shop.

I also plan on buying my own hermetic libraries and computer(s) to run them and as stated above this is very expensive, so it evens out in the end in terms of game balance.
Tarantula
QUOTE (Dancer)
Am I right about how Elemental Manipulation spells interact with Object Resistance?:

Thomas has a Force 2 Fireball spell, which he lobs at Joey the Ganger. Thomas rolls many successes on his Sorcery test, and Joey is blasted into a pile of ash. Joey's polyester muscle shirt is untouched by the conflagration, since its Object Resistance of 5 is more than twice the Force of the spell, and it flutters down like Obi-Wan's robe to rest on the ash heap. If the spell had been Force 3, it would have been vaporised along with Joey.

Well, the shirt would probably have little bits of Joey stuck and melted to it, as well as maybe being a bit charred, but yeah, it'd be in "usable" condition.
Kanada Ten
QUOTE (Dancer @ Jan 24 2005, 05:28 AM)
Joey's polyester muscle shirt is untouched by the conflagration, since its Object Resistance of 5 is more than twice the Force of the spell, and it flutters down like Obi-Wan's robe to rest on the ash heap. If the spell had been Force 3, it would have been vaporised along with Joey.

The same holds true for Combat Spells like Powerball (or Powerbolt should the target be an object).
RedmondLarry
QUOTE (SentineloftheMountain)
... I just recent did this with a character I'm running in my campaign and created some circulations during his downtime training period. You are right. Assuming the character's enchanting skill is high(6+) you can generate a lot of radical units; worth about 700k :nuyen: a batch.

In my campaign we are using the cash for karma rule which is why I created the circulations in the first place; to get more karma for other things like a familiar, new spells, and other magical gear...

The rules on this are simply broken. IMO you're playing in a broken campaign. Of course you're using the cash-for-karma rule, as it helps you break the system even more. I would find no reason to continue playing in such a campaign.
RedmondLarry
QUOTE (Dancer)
Thomas has a Force 2 Fireball spell, which he lobs at Joey the Ganger. Thomas rolls many successes on his Sorcery test, and Joey is blasted into a pile of ash. Joey's polyester muscle shirt is untouched by the conflagration, since its Object Resistance of 5 is more than twice the Force of the spell, and it flutters down like Obi-Wan's robe to rest on the ash heap.
IMO, don't play it this way. It makes it harder to believe. I suggest using the (Force >= .5 OR) requirement for spells that are attempting to affect the object directly. An elemental manipulation spell affects the object indirectly as it strikes it from the outside. Magic Finders affects the object indirectly. Levitate affects the object directly or indirectly at the choice of the GM. Powerbolt affects the object directly.
Dancer
Regretfully contemplating the fact that he is highly likely to get shot at sometime in the next week, Thomas buys a Force-8 Armour spell from his local talismonger. The night before he is scheduled to break into the corp compound he casts the spell and ties it to a Force-1 Earth Elemental, keeping it running for 24 hours (and sleeps to recover the Drain). Combined with his worn armour he has a highly respectable Ballistic Armour of 12. However, due to his Body of 3 this armour actually has little effect. No kind of elemental can be used to sustain Health spells, and a high-force Sustaining focus is beyond his financial means. So he uses the Shapechange spell at force 1 to turn into a tiger, gaining the tiger's body of 8, and ties it to a (relatively cheap) sustaining focus, attached to his body with a leather harness. His ballistic armour drops to 8, but in combination with a body of 8 he feels himself well protected. Since he has neither the Incantation nor Gesture Geasa, his spellcasting abilities for the Run are not inhibited (although speech is, and he must communicate using Entertainment).

Is Thomas barking mad, or merely a lateral thinker?
Demosthenes
And here I thought elementals could only be used to sustain spells for much shorter periods of time...

I'll have to get out the ole rulebook when I get home...
Dancer
QUOTE (Demosthenes @ Jan 25 2005, 12:32 PM)
And here I thought elementals could only be used to sustain spells for much shorter periods of time...

I'll have to get out the ole rulebook when I get home...

If you don't mind killing the elemental, they can sustain a spell for (Force) days. I'm not entirely sure about the ethics of this though.
Demosthenes
Ethics are not for "people who commit heinous crimes for nuyen" smokin.gif
toturi
What is Thomas smoking? The effect of the Armour spell last only 1 day. So if he casts it at 2100hrs, it will last till 2100hrs the next day and he'll be a glowing tiger all the way to the run. Not to mention, the leather harness "may be ripped or destroyed".

He just spent 8000 nuyen.gif for the Armour spell and spent 1000 nuyen.gif for the elemental that he can never call on again.
Dancer
QUOTE (toturi)
What is Thomas smoking? The effect of the Armour spell last only 1 day. So if he casts it at 2100hrs, it will last till 2100hrs the next day and he'll be a glowing tiger all the way to the run. Not to mention, the leather harness "may be ripped or destroyed".

The Shapechange spell will have a drain of 1M, so that can be cast on-site, and he'll merely be a glowing human on the way to the run (possible hideable with Mask). During the run he'll be an invisible glowing tiger.

24 hours should be plenty of time to pull off the active portion of a run. For an extra 1000 nuyen.gif he can make it last 48 hours.
toturi
tsk tsk... I saved the best for last, but let me first correct your mis-conception. The practical drain for Shapechange is 2M. No TN can be 1. So the TN is still 2.

But back to my best point: the difference between Mssr Thomas and a tiger's body is 5. And p 148 states: This difference cannot exceed the spell's Force. So... he wants to be a Body 4 tiger? OK, fine with me.
Dancer
QUOTE (toturi @ Jan 25 2005, 01:00 PM)
tsk tsk... I saved the best for last, but let me first correct your mis-conception. The practical drain for Shapechange is 2M. No TN can be 1. So the TN is still 2.

It's worth noting as 1M, in case you have something increasing target numbers. But my point is that it can be easily resisted down to 0.

QUOTE (toturi)
But back to my best point: the difference between Mssr Thomas and a tiger's body is 5. And p 148 states: This difference cannot exceed the spell's Force. So... he wants to be a Body 4 tiger? OK, fine with me.


Oops, missed that. Better go get the crack pipe off of Thomas...

He could use a Force-5 Transformation and another force-1 elemental to sustain it, but it's really getting not worth it at that stage.
Catsnightmare
QUOTE (cracky)
I just started playing shadowrun. I have a good grasp of the rules but, I think I must be doing something wrong with the magic rules. Here's an example of how magic goes in my game and if anybody could tell me what I'm doing wrong it would be appreciated.

1.mage player chooses to cast manaball at serious force
2.mage rolls sorcery test and makes 2-4 successes on every person in 6 meter area(which always seems to be like 3 people at least).
3.all npcs make spell resitance test against force of the spell(6) using willpower(4) and fail miserably.
4.more then 2 net successes left, staged up to deadly.
5.all npcs in area fall over dead.
6.mage rolls to resist against force of spell halved (3) using some dice from spell pool also.
7.mage gets 6 successes, stages down to light damage.

Is this how it is supposed to work? If so is there any good ways to counter balance this?

One small error in that. At a Force 6 spell that would be a 12 meter area of effect.
Necro Tech
Just a quick note and the side business of making and selling alchemical radicals. Sure you can make stuff worth 3/4 of a million nuyen but how do you unload this stuff? Who is buying it? Its so expensive and rare that your customer base will be extremely small. You might be lucky to sell all of it in a year unless a corporation or crime syndicate wants to buy it. That of course leads to other problems. Plus, you get no karma for that month and all the locals are probably going to take an interest in you if they find out what you do for a living.

As far as mana ball vs stun ball, they are rare but when you find the sammy with a pain editor who ignores all stun damage or the trauma damper which pulls off a box of stun, you can get filled with lead and wishing you had used mana ball.
Kanada Ten
Well, Manaball is also useful for destroying spirits while astrally projecting (since stun damage just disrupts the spirit). Plus Manaball is a great weedkiller.
RedmondLarry
QUOTE (Catsnightmare)
One small error in that. At a Force 6 spell that would be a 12 meter area of effect.

Force has nothing to do with the area of the spell. A magician with Magic 6 will cast area spells that are circular and 6 meters in radius, even if it is a Force 3 spell.

Whether you call that a 6 meter area of affect or a 12 meter area of affect, either one, you are not being specific enough in your words to accurately describe it do the reader. Accurate descriptions would be circular, 6-meter radius, or 12 meter diameter, or 113.1 square meters on open terrain.

If you wish, you can consider the area of affect to be a sphere ...
kevyn668
QUOTE (Dancer)
QUOTE (toturi @ Jan 25 2005, 01:00 PM)
tsk tsk... I saved the best for last, but let me first correct your mis-conception. The practical drain for Shapechange is 2M. No TN can be 1. So the TN is still 2.

It's worth noting as 1M, in case you have something increasing target numbers. But my point is that it can be easily resisted down to 0.

I always played it as still 2. If there are modifiers after the fact, they add to the base of 2, not one.
mfb
i don't believe that's correct. the book states that the lowest TN possible is 2; that doesn't mean that drain, damage, or whatever can't be 1.
kevyn668
My way just stops the TN mods from adding on to a negative TN. SR is deadly. That's the way I like it.

Its just my view.
tisoz
QUOTE (cracky @ Jan 24 2005, 03:03 AM)
I just started playing shadowrun. I have a good grasp of the rules but, I think I must be doing something wrong with the magic rules.  Here's an example of how magic goes in my game and if anybody could tell me what I'm doing wrong it would be appreciated.

1.mage player chooses to cast manaball at serious force
2.mage rolls sorcery test and makes 2-4 successes on every person in 6 meter area(which always seems to be like 3 people at least).
3.all npcs make spell resitance test against force of the spell(6) using willpower(4) and fail miserably.
4.more then 2 net successes left, staged up to deadly.
5.all npcs in area fall over dead.
6.mage rolls to resist against force of spell halved (3) using some dice from spell pool also.
7.mage gets 6 successes, stages down to light damage.

Is this how it is supposed to work? If so is there any good ways to counter balance this?

6 successes will stage the drain from Serious down to nothing. Your drain is based on what you decide to cast, not what it inflicts after getting staged up or down by successes. Otherwise spells that failed to inflict any damage would cause no drain.

Regarding Enchanting, I'd venture a corp would help their magicians get a setup where there is an enchanting shop and an Ally that knows Enchanting. The ally need only be Force 1 (no karma) but can know Enchanting up to its summoner (say at 6 for 6 karma.) It doesn't get much cheaper for a corp to make a money machine. They probably have to artificially limit supply, like DeBeers or OPEC. So when Mr. Independant Enchanter starts eroding their profits, they are going to put an end to Mr. IE.
Shaudes29
QUOTE (Dancer)
Am I right about how Elemental Manipulation spells interact with Object Resistance?:

Thomas has a Force 2 Fireball spell, which he lobs at Joey the Ganger. Thomas rolls many successes on his Sorcery test, and Joey is blasted into a pile of ash. Joey's polyester muscle shirt is untouched by the conflagration, since its Object Resistance of 5 is more than twice the Force of the spell, and it flutters down like Obi-Wan's robe to rest on the ash heap. If the spell had been Force 3, it would have been vaporised along with Joey.

I do not agree with this, becous the fire ball spell is not being directly cast on teh shirt. It specificly says that physical manipulation spells will efect that surt just like a flame thrower was used on it. It would resist the damage with its barier rating, off 0? Now the secondary efects of the fire ball cetching it of fire may not have efected it. If you wanted a physical spell that did not harm teh shirt it would hafta have teh limiter living ony, or somthing like that.

Now if it had been an ignite spell cast on the shirt it woudl have fizzeld.
Fortune
QUOTE (tisoz)
6 successes will stage the drain from Serious down to nothing. Your drain is based on what you decide to cast, not what it inflicts after getting staged up or down by successes. Otherwise spells that failed to inflict any damage would cause no drain.

But the Drain Code for Manaball is [+1DL], which would mean that when it is cast at Serious, it would take 8 successes to reduce the Drain to nothing.
tisoz
QUOTE (Fortune)
QUOTE (tisoz @ Jan 29 2005, 03:45 AM)
6 successes will stage the drain from Serious down to nothing.  Your drain is based on what you decide to cast, not what it inflicts after getting staged up or down by successes.  Otherwise spells that failed to inflict any damage would cause no drain.

But the Drain Code for Manaball is [+1DL], which would mean that when it is cast at Serious, it would take 8 successes to reduce the Drain to nothing.

Oops! Didn't check that, went by post where took his saying Force/2 was the damage code.
Fortune
It's cool. Back when he first posted it I wrote up a whole post correcting him (almost word-for-word the same as yours), until I noticed that he was actually refering to Manaball. I had to edit it (my first post after his), inserting some lame banality to cover my error before anyone noticed. Just don't tell anyone. wink.gif
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