How do you limit the Influence Spell ? What kind of things a mage can or can't do with it, in your opinion ?

"These aren't the drones you're looking for...move along..."

My GM and I got into a brief discussion on this recently. The big caveat to remember about Influence is that, while it's very flexible, once it fires off, the spell is over. I don't have my books w/ me, but the spell's description says this. So you can't make a permanent, continuous effect. We also were led to believe that one can't stack multiple Influences on a single person, though someone here might dispute this.

As for what it can do, I'd say the same as Control Thoughts; pretty much anything, but anything that directly contradicts the victim's moral, ethical or personal beliefs or self-preservation (ie, killing self, friends, etc), would give a Will check vs the spell's Force. That means that if the mage isn't present, only 1 success would prevent it, but if the mage was present, they'd have to beat the mage's successes.

What about the degree of complexity ? In your opinion, can you make someone in 126 days 14 hours 31 minute 22 seconds log onto the first computer he'll see and enter the matrix-equivalent of 2 full page of code he didn't understand while singing yellow submarine ?

All my opinion; rule ninjas feel free to jump in...

I don't think one could make something keyed into something that specific in time (126 days, etc) because the average human being can't track seconds that precisely. The one caveat I would allow (if it were me) is if the victim was someone who had a continuous clock in their eyesight (ie, cyber eye option, I think).

Also, this suggestion would likely fail if at the appointed time, no computer was available (ie, if person was in the boondocks).

Entering code: If the victim had photographic (or headware) memory, then perhaps. If not, then prepare for a ton of syntax errors.

Sing Yellow Submarine, sure why not.

Make all the above happen? Up to your GM. If it were me, with the above caveats, then yes; however, if any preconditions fail (ie, no computer in sight, no recollection of the code, etc), then the whole thing would fail. Basically, Influence works best if the suggestion is relatively simple. When you attach pre-conditions, you are risking failure.

<my opinion>
No, Influence plants a single idea in the victim's head. There is nothing to indicate it happens other than right when the spell is cast. This doesn;t mean the victim will do it.

When working on a boring job someone might have the thought "I should just go home sick and tell the boss I'm not feeling well". That doesn't mean he's going to, it just means he had the thought.

Influence just impplants the thought, unlike control actions or control thoughts which forces them to carry it out. I see influence as being a far more subtle spell.

If you influence someone into somehting they were likely to do anyway, it'll work. For example, if two guards are in a guard booth and one was a porn hound, you could influence the partner to go to the bathroom right now, and influence the other to surf porn for a few minutes while his buddy is away. These are things these people would do. Trying to influnece a guard to unoad his weapon or shoot his buddy would be just like a passing strange thought and blown off. Spell suceeded, he had the thought, but it didn't have a chance of actually doing anything.
</my opinion>

If you want someone to absolutely do something, that's what control thoughts is for.

I agree with Bitbasher.

The misunderstanding of how the spell works (ie place a thought in one's head vs. controlling the actions of a NPC) came up in a game once. The caster and team was pinned down in a trench with heavy bushes and foliage growing overhead. A team of mercs were firing blindly into the bushes. As long as the team kept their heads down, they were safe. Needing a diversion, the mage decides to crawl out of the trench until he can see one of the mercs firing at him. He tells me, "I cast Influence on merc X. I want him to stop firing, stand up and yell 'I'm Starman!'"

I look at him quizzically. "okayyyy."

So he casts the spell and I don't make the merc doing any of that stupid shit... because it was stupid shit. The merc had a fleeting brain fart during combat and quickly dismissed it so that he could concentrate on blowing the group away.

That's not what the spell description says, BitBasher and CrimsonJack.

The "someone" who pointed out what the NPC was doing was wrong, was the NPC himself. The problem with the Starman example is that its so unbelievable, that it would be easy to think, "man, that's just a lame idea. There's no way in hell that I'm doing that."

The spell is more plausible as what the title implies, an influence. Subtlety. Much cooler than Starman.

Why take the spell at all then? It's fairly useless the way you've got it worked out. If you were going to have the spell be that rediculously underpowered, at least make it sustained and drop the drain code a bit, so the magician can keep adding thoughts (that do not have to be acted upon, and are just kinda annoying in a small way), and maybe earn some distraction points or something.

The way the spell is Crimson Jack, it works like a post-hypnotic suggestion, the merc would not realize that he was doing something stupid because he'd be acting on the impulse as if it were his own idea. He'd need an outside force to get him to realize that it wasn't as good an idea as it seemed when it was implanted. Have you ever seen people who've had hypnotic suggestions implanted? They don't even realize that what they're doing is out of the ordinary. The deal with the spell works like that, and it has the added bonus of being useable on anybody, unlike hypnosis (though difficult at higher willpowers). Sure the Starman thing was idiotic, but the merc wouldn't realize that until well after he did it. The only way he'd not follow through with the command is if he succeeded on the reistance test, or the spell's successes failed to pass the threshhold, at which point the spell failed anyways.

That's the way it works. Turning influence into a single, easily ignored idea makes the spell worthless.

It's not useless at all, far from it. The fact that's it's NOT obvious makes it worth tons for doing things you dont want discovered. Subtlety is worth its weight in gold in many circumstances. There are a lot of reasons to take this spell the way it's run in my games over a control thoughts, stealth being the main one. The other being that it's permanent and not sustained.

Subtlety is a great value of influence, but declaring that the spell only works if the person was already going to perform that action sometime damages the spell. What you want would be the +1L "incur friendly whim" spell.
It takes 45 seconds to make an effect stick, and has serious drain. If a spell like that can only create mild impulses (which get discarded whenever the GM doesn't want it to happen), then you need to redefine stunbolt to only do force/2 power and only work when the GM has just been given a cookie by the spellcaster's player.

Hey, people, Im not asking you to like it. I clearly stated it was a house rule. cope. If you don't like it, don't use it!

The fact is my players lobbied for that change after the spell was used against them. Everyone in the game thought it was entirely too powerful as written. The power of this spell is literally insane if used as written. There's little if any reason to use any mind altering or control spell other than this one.

This is how I'd work it. The spell is like a powerful post-hypnotic command, just as in the spell description. And just like a post-hypnotic command, it can make you do all sorts of wacky stuff, but not something you are fundamentally opposed to doing. 'Shoot your friends' is not a valid command, unless you happen to be crazy (which actually makes a lot of Shadowrunners prime targets for such a thing). 'you need to go pee NOW', on the other hand, is. As is 'stand up and say that you're Starman!' because nobody's really fundamentally opposed to saying they're starman.

Control thoughts on the other hand allows you to make people do things like shoot their friends, and though the target of the spell gets a resistance check whenever you make them do this stuff, if that check fails they GOTTA do it, and no amount of "hey buddy, why are you pointing that gun at your best pal?" is going to even slow them down.

If the mage casting the spell has the skill to overcome the target's willpower (avg. willpower of 3 makes it easy on mooks, you'd need at most 4 successes, but against the Shadowrunner average of 4/5 you need 8 successes to be sure of making the spell stick, often more), and the fortitude to take the drain the spell should have a fairly solid effect.

Most of the hypnosis I've seen worked pretty much perfectly -- on those who actually went under. About a third of the people it just didn't work at all on. Admittedly this wasn't a major study or anything, it was I think 30 people picked at random from a high school for mass hypnosis, but 66% being hypnotised as a group still gives a fairly good indication of how successful hypnosis can be.

There may be something to the point that it's entirely too powerful -- I don't know, but I think just being reasonable on both sides is a better solution. Making the spell only put a thought in the head seems like an overcompensation for how much it can do (personal opinion). Making the spell put the thought in the head and influence the reasoning to make the person come up with their own justifications for or against it? Might be more reasonable. Harder to do with NPCs -- depends entirely on the roleplaying abilities. But, so does "random" thoughts popping into the head.

Example being: influence the guard not to set off the alarm.. so he takes out his gun and investigates the disturbance directly instead, because the supervisor was in a really lousy mood and was going to tear his hide out if it's a false one, which it probably is, because 'I've worked here for 2 years and there's been dozens of false alarms compared to the once we were broken into'..

Another example 'Protect us!'.. so the corp security team leader starts shouting 'We need one alive!' and using nonlethal weapons.. because there might be a bonus if they take one alive enough to get what info they can about the Johnson.

Oh, I agree. Finding the middle ground is where it works best... and is also something that we (myself and group) can all agree upon. There are plenty of suggestions that could have been implanted into a merc's mind that would have bought the team time (virtual merc elimination). For example, if the mage needed more time, he could easily have suggested that the merc he spotted make a long round-about trip around the fire zone in an effort to flank the runners. This would've bought more than enough time for the team to start wiggling out of their position with one to two less mercs gunning at them (if the mage cast this again on another merc, and so on). Having him do something completely against his core, like jumping out of cover and screaming "I'm Starman", is not this type of example. It was on this point that I made the merc decide if this course of action was warranted or not.

Kackling Kactuar: Permanent spells are the same as sustained spells (p. 178, SR3 ~ Duration:Permanent). The caster keeps the spell sustained, until he need not any longer. No where in the description of Permanent Spells does it say that the effects are not present until after the required time has passed (in this case a base time of 15 turns). They are just sustained until that point.

And to answer your question, the way that combat played out was by the first Influence caster suggesting that the team mage cast manaball on the epicenter of his team, while the second Influence mage suggested that the wujen cast a manaball into the remaining (and slightly overlapping) core of runners. As they were surprised (as in the merc scenario), things got messy immediately.

I think that's a fairly hefty proof for why reasonableness is a must.. although I can't say it's a proof for why the core is too powerful, because I don't think it reads enough that you can frag your teammates (and possibly yourself).

I mean... I've done a similar stunt in combat, but I knew it wasn't going to affect my character or the other two with him, he had enough injury mods that he wasn't going to be able to score more than 1 success high enough.. and at force 4, that's almost ignorable.

What I'm noticing though, is that it seems like the tendency of people is to take something they've seen exploited excessively well, and overcompensate a little. Not always a lot, but the way it looks is that they take something down to a reasonable detweak.. and then a bit further because they really didn't like what they saw.

It definately works for the purpose of removing the problem, I just see it as being too much. Personal opinion though, since I've never been hit by influence.. just a force 10 control actions on will 6, with 3 successes.

Permanent spells are the same as sustained spells (p. 178, SR3 ~ Duration:Permanent). The caster keeps the spell sustained, until he need not any longer. No where in the description of Permanent Spells does it say that the effects are not present until after the required time has passed (in this case a base time of 15 turns). They are just sustained until that point.

Huh, you're right. In the case of Influence, that rule's basically a loophole that makes it a viable combat spell, because it doesn't have a permanent effect after the suggested action is carried out and the spell fades. Therefore, there's no need for the mage to sustain it at all.

I never realized this 'cause all the other permanent spells do need the caster to sustain it for the required length of time before they become useful. That's so fucked up.

It still doesn't make it any worse than Control Thoughts though, since you'll need to keep casting it every phase to achieve the same effect. Do you house rule that too?

It's not like I nerfed this in-game. This was house-ruled at the onset, written in the House Rules that I handed out to everyone at the onset of the campaign (some 2-3 years ago). I had to pull it back up so the mage could actually read that we had all discussed this way back when.

Personally, I think the +1 to drain power for Control Thoughts is easily offset by the need to recast the spell every time you want the target to do something. And the lack of a resistance check with Influence is balanced by the ability of someone using Control Thoughts to issue twice the number of commands in the same amount of time. But your game, your call.

The manaball example: I'm not sure it should have been allowed to succeed, because most people are fundamentally opposed to killing their comrades until they do something to warrent it, and almost everyone is opposed to manaballing themselves. It is definately a good reason for why a spell like influence has to be treated reasonably, and the instructions kept reasonable, but I don't know if it's a strong reason for why it's an overpowered spell.

I think the debate is just for the fun of it -- I don't actually use any control spells on my shaman-adept, and it's a good way to figure out how other games are run.

As for spells being affected the same way for PCs and NPCs, I thought that was a given? I know I'd be ready to throttle a GM who decided that my spells followed one set of rules, and all the NPCs followed another. It's not an overall power loss for any one side in the game, just in the game itself -- which isn't necessairily a bad thing.

Control Thoughts, Sustainable spell and thus alterable. You can have some one tapdance for a fewrounds, shoot the president, sing show tunes, and set of HE grenades in their shorts. All in that order.

Influence, permanent, you could pull off one of these per casting

Ah.. I hadn't realized that the 'knows is wrong' depended on someone telling him/her. I still think the situation as wonky -- you've got actions being taken by people who don't have any, but it does make a bit more sense now. Thanks for explaining.

See, I wouldn't have allowed the command to go through if said standing up would be likely to kill the Merc, that would be suicidal, and therefore something the merc was fundamentally opposed to. Getting the merc to shout out "I'm Starman!" without putting himself in the line of fire, however, is not. They'd do the shouting, they wouldn't do the standing. Similarly, I would have ruled that 'Manaball your friends' is an invalid command, and would be automatically ignored (especially if the manaball would have hit the mage himself, though exceptions could be made for the more psychotic of Shadowrunner magicians). A more valid command along the 'starman' lines would have to be phrased right: "When it looks like the coast is clear and you stand up to advance on the enemy position shout 'I'm starman!'". Then tell your chummers to hold their fire and wait until someone shouts that they are starman, then pop up and start blazing. That would be a tactical, intelligent use of the Influence spell that would also be accepted as something the Merc isn't fundamentally opposed to.

Tisoz, that directly contradicts the wording of Permanent on the page they cited. "If the caster stops sustaining the spell before the required time has passed, its effects disappear, the same as a sustained spell." Meaning the effects start as soon as the spell is cast.

That is what everyone kept hitting me with.

Notice I said "I rule". I just don't see the effects even starting until it has become permanent. If it gets interrupted before the time it takes to become permanent, the mage wasted his time, nothing happens and the time he took doesn't get applied to his next attempt.

I am not saying this is backed by any wording in any book, just what makes sense to me. It makes sense to me based on duration. Instant happens instantly, sustained happens as long as sustained, permanent happens after it has gone through the mechanics to make it permanent. Those mechanics are said to be sustaining it for a number of turns. You may say that then it is a sustained spell until it becomes permanent, I (house) rule this is a simple way to explain the mechanic and does not change the spell from permanent to limited sustained followed by permanent.

Maybe this will be corrected in 4th edition. Someone can feel free to inquire.

It's FAQ answers like that that scare the bejesus out of me in regards to 4th edition. This man will quote a page reference that will absolutely directly contradict the line he just told you when you asked for clarification. This does not instill me with a sense of competence for building an entire edition of a game, no offense to anyone involved.

I've got a bad feeling about this.

Going back a bit, pre house rule discussion:

Oh Sweet Jesus of Dumpshock...

Read the quote that you just used:

Relax, I was just messing with you. I already said I'll take your word for it, no?

This is Dumpshock, no one has a sense of humor except when it's their joke laughing at someone else. Not even smileys provide any comfort for those who can find a way to take offense at a comment.

It's cool, I'll be here all week. And the week after that. And the week after that. Eventually I'll have you rolling on the floor clutching your sides and roaring with laughter just by walking into the room.

Oh, wait...