At least on german SR-boards are a lot of controversial discussions about the power of awakened characters (Schamans, Hermetics, Adepts) => "They are broken" vs "No, they are not".

Personally (while playing an hermetic mage) I would like to see some clarifications and perhaps some reduction of the powerlevel or of the possibilities of awakened characters.

=> astral perception and astral projection
=> possibilities of divination magic (don´t know the english name for "Wahrnehmungszauber")
=> better strictly mundane defense possibilities against magic
etc.

Now, is there anything planned for SR4 and or Street Magic? Or will we get the same magic system with the same possibilities (expanded metamagic etc, few limitations etc)?

SYL

Actually I´m very well aware of the rules.

I am rather asking if they will change it for SR4, and if yes, how they will change it.

SYL

sorry missunderstood the question

Yeah, I would like to see some sort of "charm" for mundanes to use against spells.

Maybe it could reduce the force of the spell for resistance tests by the force of the "charm." Spend Karma equal to the "charm's" force to operate. Expendable, maybe. That would keep it from being totally unbalancing.

I've always had charms in my games long before SoE and whatnot. Basically, there were two types. The first were simply "spell defense dice in a bottle" that expended themselves the first time they came across a spell of a certain spell category or specific spell. The second was sort of a focus that allowed the creator to protect the target with spell defense even if they were well out of LoS, essentially using the same connection a magician has with protecting their ward.

The charms we have in the game now make very little sense to me, though. So I really hope they get changed or at least renamed (to "good luck charms" at the very least) in the new edition.

Well ... I would prefer more mundane defense possibilities, wich can be mass produced like FABs and have not to be made by hand like charms or foci.

SYL

I'm not saying there shouldn't be mundane defenses as well. I just always thought having charms like those in real world and fictional mythologies and stories would be nice, too.

I actually wouldn't mind seeing some sort of skill mundanes can learn to increase their spell defense, maybe a skill that acts as complementary dice for resistance tests. Learning to focus your will in the right ways to combat magic, even if you can't use magic yourself. (Note, I just thought of this as I was reading this thread, so it hasn't had time to brew in my mind and determine if I really like it, but it seems like it might be a neat idea)

Wow. Okay, keeping in mind I started as a mage and have branched to playing about everything, let me outline what I think on this.

Take a wired 2 street sam. Nice, pretty wired two, that additional 2d6+4 initiative. Automatically the person can't roll lower than an 8 (cuz you need at least 1 reaction and you get another 1d6, duh). With just the 3d6 and +4 from wired, you can get a 22.

Your average mage gets....Well, depending on reaction, 7-9. Sometimes they'll get into the 10 or even 11 range, but usually less, unless they're geased to take boosted/wired or something.

Granted current house rules over here in nowhereland say "If you get a 22 and the other person gets a 9, you go at 22 and 12 before he goes once," in most cases all it takes to fell a mage is a good three-round burst, easily done with that 22. Street sammie with a 6 in assault rifles will win almost every time, and gods forbid it gets to the land of unarmed combat as the Adepts I'm used to seeing often do, even without deadly hands.

Now, this isn't to say that some sort of charms (Anti-fire rings, or the like) should not be used. I like the idea of a charm having a certain amount of spell pool per day to use in defense, but they should never be mass produced. Considering a mage gets...One turn, if he's lucky two....While a sam can get two easy and three or even four in rare circumstances? Come on, its a slaughter, all our poor mage has is his Manabolt and the hope to do enough damage to end things.

So yeah, a charm is nice and all, but perhaps it should be hard to obtain? At most, perhaps a powerful charm would require a focus-bonding cost as it binds itself to a "chosen" mundane?

Then again I'm not opposed to mundanes doing some sort of vision-quest or heavy martial arts training to become awakened at a slow rate via the enhancing of their essence (Everyone has an essence, right? Even if its a little candle flicker...) but that's just me

Oh boy, here we go again.

First, let me say that my longest running SR group, with whom I played for a number of years, never had even equal numbers of mages and mundanes. The mundanes were always in the majority.

But a couple of thoughts to bring to the table if you want to have the discussion again:

Buff-y the Mage Slayer: Spending a few extra points on your mundane's attributes can cheerfully gain body and willpower 5+. Nothing says "in your face" like watching the mage's expression when his manabolt bounces of the Will 6 samurai. Cos you know his Body's even higher.

Mages Not Invited: A lot of places worth the getting into will be warded. Without a whole lotta Masking, those focus-sustained or quickened spells are going to do something really unfortunate. Think of it like the mage's equivalent of trying to beat airport cyberscanners, only you can't flash a false ID to get by.

Down the Drain: Best way for a magus to manage drain is to keep his spells low-power - or rather, low code. If he wants any spell pool left to cover his team-mates, he can't afford to blow it on drain checks. And if he follows the advice of the person who commented (the last time I mentioned protecting his team) that he should be devoting himself to that then instead of casting spells, well, there ya go, mage isn't an issue anyway.

Drain and spirits. Shamen pay for their on-the-spot summoning ability with some interesting drain. (Force)M resisted not by Willpower but by Charisma. Getting a spirit worth the summoning can be a risky business. I know I rarely, if ever, go above Force 4 without a damned good reason.

A Fistful of Karma: It takes a lot to be a mage. Initiating is a good investment to start with, but realistically you'll cap out around grade 5 or 6 unless you're in a high-powered game. I know my original mage was a Grade 6 initiate after some 300 karma, and that was belonging to an initiating group. Where the sammies are spending their karma on skills and attributes (try manabolting that Willpower 8 sammie), the mage is spending it on spells (useful in their own right, but leaving the mage ever more reliant on the mundanes for any skill-based actions), foci, initiation... Well, I'm sure you know the list as well.

I See Magical People: Until the mage gets Masking, he's a walking target for any passing secmages looking for someone to roust. Sure it's not a big chance, but you know the one time you pass a Lone Star mage he's going to be asking for your licences. As for dual-natured watchdoggies, well, it's a GM call but I figure the hellhound's going to fry the bloke who glows in the astral first - threat recognition and all.

Geek The Mage!: Leave us not to forget the big ol' target painted on your forehead. The moment you do something ooky, every enemy with even a hint of a line of sight on you is going to be throwing lead like it's going out of fashion.

Dammit Jim, I'm A Mage, Not A Cleric!: Your team-mates expect full healing from you at every opportunity. Probably you feel obigated to provide it. Say hello to Mr. Drain, chummer. I don't care what your Willpower is, laying the mojo on a couple of metalhead sammies is going to hurt.

Of course, I'm not going to change many minds with this. Maybe I won't change any. But before all the number-crunching of "mages can never fail drain checks" turns up, I felt a little exploration of our world wouldn't hurt.

@DrJest: shall I really counter everyone of your arguments? You know that they can be countered very easy? On the other side every argument can be countered very easily

@frostPDP

First: I don´t think that it is a very good idea to make everyone awakened.

Second: the power of a mage does not come from its pure 1:1-duel situation abilities (or just the combat situation, when you only have to soak the bullets), but from its incredibly flexibility (just take astral projection or perception, detection spells) ... and still his possible high competence with various kinds of magic, while on the other side mundanes get not-so-nice drawbacks ... like the rules for cybernetic implantation in M&M.

For your example: take an invisible mage mit reflexes +3 in a sustaining focus, several elementars or one good spirit with confusion, some levitation action to get a good place and then some nice stun bolts. Or ritual sorcery. Or control manipulation spells. Or some of many other possibilities who are very effective. Just one example. There are, of course, situations where a mage have no chance.

In the end: I was just asking if there are some chances to the power of the awakened ...

Even a couple of wards would screw up that setup and that's not even taking into account bound Spirits and Watchers on overwatch... You don't need a mage at every facility, just have a squad ready to project to several facilities from a central security base.

The GM needs to know the rules and be creative with his magic active npcs.

Yes ... wards (made by mages) and magic active NPCs ...

to quote myself

I am not saying that DrJest is incorrect or that there aren´t any drawback. And I am very well aware that my arguments can be countered, too (beginning with the interpretation of the game world)

But let´s start one by one:

Same. Yeah, I tend to think in my more noobish (well I am! LOL) terms of "Things I've seen happen." My mage being cornered by her teammate adept who would have popped her with deadly hands D is the sort of case I'm worried about. Plus the one time I tried improved reflexes whatever, I wound up missing at TN 4. That reallllly hurt, to eat the buisness end of a Citymaster as my anti-vehicle rocket flies past it.

And not everyone is awakened. There are processes (And they're karma-eaters, let me tell you, so they aren't realllly suitable for everone) to obtain points of magic. Think initiation for each point, so grade 1 is one point...Etc etc...Yeah that eats the karma quick. It would have a huge roleplaying component to it, though - Something like seeking out and finding a legendary martial arts master.

Furthermore as for spirits; they're great if you're going to have a war in the barrens where you can have a nice little army of glowing, magical fireflies. Once you walk into downtown Seattle, somehow I think you're going to find the Star lining up reallly quick when the summonings go down. Its the same reason that the character we let be quadrapalegic with a small mech to walk around in became the worst GM device ever - The Metroplex Guard would show up if he went anywhere a cop might see him.

Oh, full mages can bring quite a bit to bear in the right circumstances, but there's two things often forgotten. 1: Drain can really mess someone up, essentially in a Madness-Combat sort of way, and 2: What can be brought to bear is paid for with that A priority/30 build points. If the idea is parity, there's a reason why street sams are always going to start with more money and obtain more useful karma than mages ever will, and that's the balancing act.

Especially when you have a grade 1 adept who kills old ladies for fun threatening your death. Yeah, thats never fun when you can sense "PK fest" coming up.

My problem with wards is that they're a perimeter defense only. I'd love to see a technique where an awakened or group of awakened would be able to claim "scanctum" over an area, giving it both a ward-like perimeter defense, and placing limits on the kind of magical activity a random awakened inside the area/perimeter is capable of. I know I could achieve that kind of effect by using some of the more exotic metamagical techniques to establish an aspected background count, but I was hoping for something as "entry-level" as warding itself.

If generating magical scanctum over an area didn't have much more in the way of requirements that normal warding did, then it'd be concivable that you could have magical security companies that employed barely-awakeneds such as minor adepts to go around establishing low level sanctums for the general populace. It doesn't solve the "Hire a mage to protect you from a mage" issue, but I think it'd still help reign in some of the worst abuses.

In the cover of night, its not terribly hard to conceal a grenade launcher until you are actually going to use it, whereas most spirits will be easy prey to anyone who you'd have to bring that much firepower against. That old adage is still strong, "Once you've had to fire a gun things have already gone wrong."

By "useful" karma I mean "gee, I'm spending 15 points to initiate" as opposed to "What skills do I want to raise?" I don't usually wind up using foci (cuz they can get broken prettty easy) so I don't spend most of my points, but with all the runs I've done I'm yet to initiate because one character took a bullet to the eye and I need to fix him first while the other who was initiation-level wound up getting captured by the Tir then rescued by a free spirit who ate his 18 karma as a down payment for the saving. (Ironically, the friendly fox wanted to hand him a focus which was more costly to bind than the karma taken itself...)

And as my signature quote gives away, my gaming groups never go according to plan. One of our players tends to RP his characters as sociopathic evil sorts who do whatever they want and kill whoever gets in their way. So when the words "Player-Kill fest" come up, we think of him and how he might put us six feet under.

Yeah I definitely mis-typed.

By "easy prey" I mean easily detected. Its not about the use itself but its about the approach. If you can approach undetected you can get out without too much trouble. If you broadcast your presence then you get a lot more flak.

And yeah, spending points on spells is "useful" in my book - To bond a focus is a huge cost.

Wetwork can be done mostly in a silenced way (Just slit a throat) and other missions of course require firepower, but you still want to get in quietly.

I'm of the "mage is broken" faction. Not irredeemably broken, but broken to the extent that I'd never play anything else if I was worried about wielding a lot of influence in the group's actions.

Silly arguments why the mage is not broken:
1) karma sink: yes the mage can spend karma to improve their magic. Key word obviously being "can". They "can" also spend karma in the same way as everyone else to improve their skills, attributes et al. Since their starting skills and stats will tend to be lower, they'll probably get more bang for their buck, but even if that isn't true, adding an extra option you can chose to spend karma on inherently makes that type of character better - not worse. If spending on stats is so much better than initiating, then do it. That goes double for a diminishing marginal returns system like shadowrun, where spread karma around will tend to be much, much better value.
"Leting their magical talents stagnate" is the sort of thing that ought to be reflected in the rules but isn't.

2) if the samurai has a gun pointed at the mage and has wired reflexes and the mage doesn't then the mage is, like, totally dead: By this standard, deckers really, really suck, because none of the skills and abilities he gets for chosing to be a decker (as opposed to stuff he could do with leftover build points/money) help him at all in this situation (or not under the current rules anyway). The point about mages is that they're handed an absolutely incredibly versatile package of benefits, and that they're also reasonably solid in a combat situation just on the basis of their package of magic. Astral projection alone, when used creatively, is huge benefit, even with the removal of grounding. The fact that it's basically an aferthought relative to the mages' key talents of sorcery and conjuring makes the character type feel unbalanced to me.

3) Use more mages/geek the mage first.
These work, up to a point, but don't address the basic complaint about overpowered character types (in any system): that they become the focus of the campaign. If every opponent is trying desperately to limit the mage and is busy installing expensive magical security to deal with the mage, then the mage is still an overpowered character, just one you happen to have been able to stop. It's like someone playing magneto in an x-men campaign (I'm assuming we're mostly nerdy enough to follow that reference) - you can make everyone's guns and bullets and fortresses out of ceramics and have everyone gang open on magneto, and he would be effectively restricted. He'd still be the most powerful character in the game though. It's for this reason I'm not all that taken with the idea that magic should be able to sell magical protection more easily.

Key problems/suggested solutions:
Cost: A great deal of what I complain about can be resolved just by making a mage a little more expensive in terms of priorities/build points. Make the skill/attribute/resource gulf a little wider and you don't have such a problem. I know that I can houserule this, and I do, but we're discussing the canon game from a critical perspective, so my comments on how canon ought to be changed are relevant (though I'm hoping "just houserule it then" as a catchall response is on the way out)

Mundane exclusivity: Modifying cost isn't quite enough, if only because character balancing also requires that characters all have some kind of cool stuff to call their own. The trouble with SR mages, as I see it, is that they've been allowed to encroach on all the turf that makes non-decking non-rigged mundanes special. The "sammy goes first" thing is a great example. Back before my players started twinking spell locks this was true and was a huge balancing factor - Sammy's were still kinda one-trick-ponies, but at least they went first and more often. Throw in the automatic twinked increase reaction focus that every single mage takes and that distinction disappears. Sammy might be more fast, on average, but speed is removed from the realm of specifically mundane advantages.
The ability to geas magic loss (as opposed to making a geas a penalty for magic loss) did the same - suddenly things like smartgun links, which meant that a sammy would shoot better, always, become the province of mages too, as do other cheap boosts like senseware. And finally, mages can access any and all of the none cyber tech purportedly brought in to level the playing field. The only limitation on mages using the big guns, the heaviest armour, the smartest surviellence gear, is them having the requisite skills - that's not enough to make a mundane feel exciting.

Response: I'm not in favour of more tech which can affect magic, it achieves the right result, but just doesn't fit the flavour of the SR universe as I see it. Rather, I think that if tech can't touch magic, magic ought to struggle more dealing with tech. These don't need to be radical changes, but small things like allowing technologically intensive areas to generate background counts solely on that basis, linking spell resistence to essence (inversley obviously) and/or jacking object resistence ratings for highly processed items (high than they currently are) would help a great deal, both practically and in allowing mundanes an area that they can see as reserved for themselves.

We're up to SR3. The relative power of mages hasn't changed appreciably in that time.

I'm thinking... maybe there's a reason?

Fixing the a handful of spells will go a long way towards making high end mages a lot less dominating of game play. Some things that come to mind are levitation (which basically ends up being flying at really fast speeds) and the near inevitable increased reflexes spell lock combo.

Ah ok ... yes, lovely rule ... if you want to criple the spellcaster. Not my favorite.

SYL

Ah yes, the lovely medium: I love background count and I encourage every GM who thinks "mages are broken" to use background count in a very strict and hard interpretation.

SYL

I'm very time-limited right now, so I'm unable to read the whole thread and follow all the arguments. I'd just like to go on record as saying I agree 100% with DrJest's first post, listing the reasons why a magician is not overpowered.

If the GM understands the magic system, then keeping a magican from becoming broken is very easy. In my group it starts by making players work to find/make their spell formulas or teachers. Also, given how expensive even simple foci are, characters with a dozen different enhancement spells locked onto themselves has just never been a problem. That's before I ever set a ward in front of them to sneak their sustained spells through.

Basically, the current system works well. I hope they maintain the same balance in SR4. Hopefully I'll be able to respond more on the weekend.

Mot to mention the cybernetic implantation rules, SOTA-rules etc.

on the other side: background count, kill the mage first etc.

SYL

Killing the mage first was often wise in sr2 & background count existed in sr2.