I am working on a new character, a mage. This is uncharted territory for me as I have always run either a Sam or an Adept. I am wanting to take the spell Increase Reflex's +3; so what Force level do I learn it at? The target is Reaction, and must be preformed on a "willing" subject. So at what level should I learn this spell or could I just learn it at Force 1 (or alternately 1 for +1, 2 for +2, 3 for +3)?

Thanks for the help.

Force 1; you'll get +3d6 to your Initiative regardless. This is one of the few spells where Force plays no factor in how effective the spell is.

For a vast majority of spells, Force determines how powerful and/or how hard to resist they are. Any spell you expect to use in Combat and/or Shadowrunning (ie, Invi, Detects, Mana Bolt, Fireball, Control Manips, Heals, etc) should all be a minimum Force of 6 (more if possible). Anything less and you can expect your opposition to walk right through your attacks.

You can *probably* cheat a little if a spell is non-resisted, for self-only, and/or for support only (ie, Levitate, Fashion, Makeover, Nutrition, etc), but even these are going to be weaker if their Force is lessened.

All you need is one success for it to work so Force 1. If you use a sustaining focus or Quickening to keep it up always, then lower force spells are easier for opponents to break.

As a general rule, my group chooses Force >= 3 for all spells for the most part.

That's true until you start initiating. Once you have masking, a Force: 1 sustaining focus starts looking really good again, because the lower force is easier to hide/get past wards, using masking.


Also, be sure to ask your GM if he uses any special rules for that spell. Dumpshock may not be a representative sample of all Shadowrun players, but simply judging from the posts whenever this spell comes up, it seems to be one of the most commonly house-ruled spells.

By the rules, Force 1 is the obvious choice. The only downside is that it's easier to dispell, but the upsides are that force 1 focii are much cheaper, the spell itself takes less to learn, and the drain is much nicer at low force. Of course, I don't believe the spell adds constants to reaction, like wired reflexes or the adept version does (ie it adds 3d6 instead of 6+3d6) but it's still quite powerful.

Many folks house rule it so there's one Increase Reflexes spell, drain code D, that adds 1d6 to your initiative per success, to a maximum of half the force of the spell, which is pretty fair (in theory you could add more than 3d6, but at that point you're launching a force 8 spell, 4D drain code, needing 4 successes on a target number that's likely 6 or higher, which is pretty darn hard to pull off, so it's balanced enough).

JaronK

Thanks all for your replies. At this time we do not have any "house" rules on this type of magic. While magic/mage characters are new to me, they are not new to others in the "group", and they have never used this spell (mainly due to the same reason I have asked for some clarification). The idea that a Force 1 spell is easier to dispell is something to think about, however, a mage with x+4d6 init, in normal combat situations, (and a DM that does not use this same spell for the "enemy" mages ) should make this mage a more potent force in a fight.

It's still not that big a deal, however. The mage with his 4+4d6 (average 18) is still on average going to go after the sam, whose init with wired reflexes 2 will be around 10+3d6 (average 20.5), and this is without any quickness-enhancing bioware or Enhanced Articulation. Note that I'm assuming the sam will have a higher unaugmented Reaction than the mage as well, which I think is reasonable. The mage's enhancement is much easier to negate (dispell, getting caught by a ward, stealing the Sustaining Focus, *destroying* the Sustaining Focus, etc) and doesn't increase his Reaction in any way, so he's more likely to fail a Surprise Test and get caught flat-footed.