For some reason I'm having a hard time getting 3rd edition magic rules. (cold medication no doubt helping). Example: Manabolt. I understand that the mage has to learn it at a certain force but what is it's damage? L,M,S, or D? How do I figure it out or where is it listed? Cause man, I can't find it.

Thanks for your help

You choose the damage level as you cast.. its variable

Yeah, rather than have ManaDart, ManaBolt, etc, it's just one spell now. You choose When you cast the spell at what damage you cast it. That determines the drain you take as well.

Sphynx

So up to the spell level, you choose both the power and damage level?

Yep. You choose the Power by choosing what Force to cast it at and you choose the Damage Level.

Side Note: If you choose to cast something that has a Drain of (Damage Level + 1), and opt to cast it at Deadly Drain, the TN raises by 2 to resist the Drain, so a Force 6 ManaBall cast at Deadly Drain would have a Drain TN of 5D.

Sphynx

They basically did the same things they did for the old Heal Light Wounds, Heal Moderate Wounds etc spells - condense them down into 1 spell that can cover all damage levels.

Ok. I think I got it as far as it goes, correct me if I'm wrong. Example: mage learns manabolt at force 3. He can only use the spell up to force 3, but can cast at lower force. He then can decide what damage he wants at any force up to 3. F1L or F1M or F1S or F1D. The damage level dictates drain.

Exactly. It also helps if you rename the spells for each character. Some mage who happened to grow up watching the re-runs of this old flatvid cartoon from Japan might call his Powerball spell "Kamehame Ha" and have it manifest as a blue ball of energy. This keeps you from having to have 15 different spells for every damage level with different manifestations and lets you also customize your characters more.

The Abstruse One

[QUOTE]Exactly. It also helps if you rename the spells for each character. Some mage who happened to grow up watching the re-runs of this old flatvid cartoon from Japan might call his Powerball spell "Kamehame Ha" and have it manifest as a blue ball of energy. This keeps you from having to have 15 different spells for every damage level with different manifestations and lets you also customize your characters more.

Are you saying that a mage has to learn the spell over for each damage level or each level of power? If it is power 3 from my earlyer example can he cast it at lower power with out learning the spell over? Or is it only the damage level he can change and has to learn the spell over for different power levels?

I'll finally have time to read the magic section more carefully this weekend and hopefully this will all make since.

er, no. in second edition, you had to--in third edition, you simply learn manabolt at force (whatever). then, when you cast manabolt, you decide on the fly what damage level you're casting at. the damage level you cast at determines the drain.

Please note that learning a spell has also changed betweene ditions: you no longer need to learn the Force 1 version of a spell before learning the Force 2 version, and so on. Rather, each spell costs a number of karma equal to it's force to learn (minus astral quest, minimum 1), and you know the spell at that force and can cast it at any force up to and including that force.

So, let's say you take Toxic Wave 3 at character generation, and later want to upgrade to Toxic Wave 7. You design the formula, buy the formula, hire a teacher, summon an elemental, take an astral quest, whatever, and make your final test to learn the spell and succeed. You now pay 7 karma and have the spell at Force 7.

jeez, being a mage must have sucked in 2e.

@ Ancient History

I've not yet met anyone who played it the way you describe for the earlier rules. Is that what your campaign understood 2nd Editon or 1st Edition rules intended for learning a spell? The earlier edition campaigns I was in always judged it to be 6 Karma to learn a Force 6 spell, with no requirement to first learn it first at force 1, then 2, etc.

*Scratches head* Jaysis...I must be tired. Yeah, I was in a campaign once during 2nd Ed where a GM made us do that, but no it was never canon in 1st or 2nd edition. AH obviously needs sleep.

Got it now! Thanks everyone!

SR2 mages weren't THAT bad because they also had more spell points to deal with -- depending on what resources they took at chargen that is (which was kinda lame IMHO that the amount of money you have somehow affects what spells you know when you have homeless street shamen running around...) That was one of the best changes for mages I think. But if you took priority A, you got like 50 SP to start with. That's 10 spells at Force 5, which is a bit better than the mages now (esp. considering the spells you only needed to get at force 1, like Improved Reflexes). But your attributes and skills would have suffered BAD, and to get priority A for resources, that meant you were an adept of some kind (aka "aspected magician" according to 3e rules)...and you were a human, no ifs ands or buts about it because metahuman races were ALL priority A.

The Abstruse One

The good part about SR2 mages was that they got a lot of spellpoints for high Resources, and I think they started out with any foci that they had automatically bonded. I don't have the SR2 rules any more, but I do have Sprawl Sites. One of the archetypes, the Former Mage Detective, has 50 points worth of spells and a Force: 5 Power Focus (and I think they misprinted the cost of Power Foci for awhile in 2nd Edition, making them incredibly cheap).

I could only ever get a rating 3 power focus at chargen for my 2nd Ed mages...wonder how they did that one...

The Abstruse One