Fancy that.

Ever consider the third possibility, that it involves moving in an erratic fashion such that the attacker has difficulty properly lining up a shot on you and when the shot is actually fired you aren't in front of the barrel despite there not being any physical obstacles between you and the attacker?

I call bull. -4 is a big mod, and if you're not Rigging TNs can hit 8 fairly quickly.

(Well, to be fair I don't know how well the Rigger was designed)

~J

Thats no completely true about aiming. Taking the time to spend the action on aiming, to me is spending additional time making sure your sights are lined up better. The way i see normal shooting without taking the aiming action is 'snap shooting'. Quickly pulling the gun up and towards the target and pulling the trigger, not nessicarily making sure the sights are perfectly lined up, prehapse looking down the barrel but quickly to make sure its pointed towards the person. But it depends on the weapon too. Sniping without using a aim action i would see as pulling up your scope quickly putting the sites on the target and fireing spending very little time lining things up. Where as i would see aiming taking that little bit of extra time to center those sites on the person.

But I suppose that all depends on how you interprate it as a gm.

Which is exactly my point as to why a mage shouldn't be going into melee in the first place. The only mediocre opponents are people likely to be using guns and playing keep-away.

And you'll note I commented the weapons specialist sucks. Wait until a sam or something similar comes along. We'll likely see a character much better in melee then.

Depends on who's jumping him. If he gets very damned lucky and it's someone poor at melee, he might have a chance. Considering your average group will, due to tactics, leave the melee to those who know what they are doing, in most cases the mage will be gutted before he has a chance to do damage. IME, it's only a case of amatures or things going very badly where you don't have those very skilled in melee being the ones who do it.

If you build a half-way decent magician, you usually don't have to worry about melee. This is why shamans rock over mages. They can get melee units at any time. I think this new edition has both operating that way.

That's what guns, spirits, and unarmed melee are for. As for the weapons master: Decent only if you consider average to be decent. I don't.

The problem is that you have to remember these people are street level. That means they are mostly average. The old ranks from SR3 still apply for skills, but it's just harder to build people with superhuman skills in this one. On average, any opposition not on street level should include people better at guns and melee than both this mage and the weapons specialist are. Why? To reflect the better training they have. And to say the old standard doesn't apply is a logical fallacy. The way the FAQs are worded, the old standards on both skills and attributes still apply and FanPro is trying to make those standards actually mean something.

Having two Big Black Books is gonna be confusing.

How about Bigger Blacker Book...ok it sounded cool to me but it is still BBB.
How about Green Text Book?

Well, typically BBB refers to the corebook of whatever is the newest edition. BBB was used even for the 1st and 2nd editions.
The only confusion comes at times like these, when some people have already switched its meaning to the new edition, while haven't because they have yet to adopt it or whatever other reason they have.

There will only be one soon enough. SR3 will become explicitly denoted just like BBB for SR2 and SR1 are.

At least in SR3, a friend of mine who is good with numbers was able to create an adept who I ruled could pull off neo-esq feats, after we realised that he dodged 2 gunshots and a punch, while shooting three people, all in three seconds time (Three seconds is a standard turn right?)

Well see here's where we differ in opinion. To me a combat mage is supposed to be in the thick of combat. He's got spells as his main punch but he can easily fall back on ranged weapons and melee weapons if need be and not instantly be without defense. You seem to believe that a combat mage shouldn't be in the thick of combat and is useless if he gets jumped.

You sir make very poor combat mage chars.

You're right, teams of defenders typicaly leave melee to people who can do melee well. But then again most Guards don't close to melee as well, sticking to their strength of ranged firepower. But you brought up tactics, so what, your group if the guy with weak melee gets jumped by a strong melee person leaves him to get dismembered? No most teams I've seen that work well together support each other well.

Combat mages, to me should excell at combat. They should be able to sling good combat spells, with the ability to fall back to ranged and melee combat abilities. You prefer unarmed, I like the katana idea here despite the fact it requires you to have the weapon drawn. But unless you have to cast with hand motions now, having it out shouldn't be too much of a problem most of the time, unless you have your pistol drawn ofcourse.

But moving on to the power level of these people. You do realize you can easily, and I do say easily, mulch a team of high powered runners, with completely average dudes that have great tactics? Skill level and attribute level are misleading. I could hand out 4 or 5 average chars to a group of my friends, and when they work together they could easily take out a group of runners of higher skill levels. Granted its not easy, but no one ever said it was.

Also I'm not so sure the skill levels are completely equivilent. Afterall I can easily build a character out of chargen in 3rd ed that pops a 8 skill in something and thats without trying hard or maxing out the things I could to get it even higher. And actualy I can't see that SR3 chars being that much better than street level. Afterall their KP was still 1 to begin with. 1. It was 1 back in second eddition too, and they were more street level then. Then in 3rd they got a few more skills to show they were seasoned runners? Come on. Skills are not everything. I've seen GM's easily bust up teams of runners with a single char.

One example of late, I know someone who has a virtualy maxed out perception adept with which he doesn't like playing with anymore because he unballances runs easily. He claimed he couldn't be killed. In a matter of 15 mins I showed him I could put him into several situation in which he could easily get toasted. Street level chars does not mean they're worthless or underpowered. A well run group of even just those weapon specialists could easily take out a standard starting level SR3 group.

Umm, sure for a support/pure mage. But this is a mage that is -intended- to use melee. It hasn't been put together the best, but the point of him is to have the skills, attibutes, spells, and equipment to be an able melee and pistol combatant that can also suppliment those strong secondary magical abilities (Manabolts, astral viewing, summoning, Counterspelling, etc.).

Thus the qualifier of "combat" preceding "mage" in the name.

P.S. If the combat mage isn't going to be able to close and engage effectively with gun weilding opponents then melee specialists are going to be damn good and humped.

Actually, I speak from experience playing mages of all types for months. After you blow up part of Seattle with a sam in my group, they force you to play a different character type for awhile.

To be honest, I usually play a combat shaman when I play a mage. You have no idea how many many magical contests I have won simply by shooting the other guy in the forehead. Can't exactly cast spells when your brains are scattered all over the wall behind you. I also tended to carry a grenade launcher or two. Street sams have a problem dodging grenades when they go off at point-blank range.

However, at the same time, I never made a mage that stood up well in melee, no matter how hard I tried. Why? Because of only average or below skills in melee and no cyberwear. Even building one with excellent melee skills provided a problem, simply because of no cyberwear. I'll admit I could take on unskilled mundanes, but they typically died before they got close enough to cause a problem anyway. Hell, what good is a shaman if you can't have lookout spirits to guard your flanks?

Usually my guy is backing up while his spirits are pounding on the jumper and pulling out his gun. Unless we're talking a powerful sam, they didn't get a second chance to get close. If you can summon spirits, use them as cannon fodder.

True. But, once again, my own experience simply tells me that there are better ways to handle it. Besides, wounds tend to affect spellcasting.

But against a group of high powered characters that use tactics? Unless your Red Samurai are idiots, they won't just blindly charge into battle.

So have I. But, at the same time, I see a lot more people making professionals with SR3. Hell, there's a very famous group that works as a corporation using SR3 rules. Look up The Great Krass sometime. But, overall, FanPro didn't like the power level and has created a system that forces a certain power level.

Depends. Are the SR3 characters well run as well? If poorly, then I agree. If as experts, those weapons specialists are just fragged.

Being able to use melee is not a requirement for a combat-style character. If anything, they can focus his melee skills around his conjuring. Why should he run into melee when he can have spirits do it for him? Yes, he potentially has to summon before the run, but at least he'll have them. And, if he's smart, he'll save them for an emergency.

In my experience, that's typically true when it comes to gun combat.

Since there are now three conjuring skills, I assume Conjuring Skill Group is all three skills for a reduced cost compared to purchasing all three skills separately like he did for Spellcasting and Counterspelling but didn't get Ritual Sorcery.

I'm pretty sure that it is removed.

I mean he's addicted to stims! If that rule remained, he's worse than useless for anything more than a one- or two-shot game.

BTW, as for Perception, I'm just wondering how many people here used Stealth (Alertness) as a complimentary roll for Perception Tests, or used the rule in Cannon Companion where Athletics could be used to increase your Combat Pool for Dodge Tests? These two skills just solidify those rules into something which works like every other skills, and in indeed, streamlined compared to the Third Edition rules.

I'd say it's probably a must-have skill now the combat is opposed because you probably get to roll it every time someone shoots at you before even worrying about a Soak Test which I think is safe to assume from comments is harder to walk away from totally unscathed.

So, yeah, it's probably a big deal.

Why bother with a dice pool penalty. If you're only using your Attribute, you're already at a statistical disadvantage given that most Attributes are supposed to be 3 or 4, and without the benefit of the dice you'd get if you had the skill. Why add a further complicating element?

If that's true, then it's possible the "10 bp / att" is incorrect, since "5" as a magical rating is surely higher than average.

From what I'm seeing on the two released sample characters, the bp cost of attribute points could be as simple as:

0-4: Rating * 6bp
5+: Rating * 10bp

With 10 attributes requiring ratings to be set at minimum of 1 and the 11th (Magic) allowed to be a 0 unless magicaly active.

You can out of chargen virtualy blow up part of seatle with your standard mage. Secondly where did i point out that he had to stand up well in melee? I said that he should have skills to fall back on so he wouldn't instantly be defenseless. Continuing on, you keep using your concept of a combat mage to discount the points I make using my own version of a combat mage.

Just as a aside, your mage is in the back supporting, and all of a suddent, that sneaky little stealther in the ruth cloak comes up from behind and engages you in melee without warning. You've effectively be taken out of the combat. Wounds affect spell casting, so does drain.

As for the weapons specialists of this ed easily with good tactics taking out your starting 3rd ed party. Yes I would say so even if the 3rd ed people were run well. As long as the weapon specialists are smart and make the 3rd ed chars play to their strengths, then yes the 3rd ed chars can easily become toast.

And in all honesty, if your gm basicaly just let you summon and summon and other such in the back and never took you out, well then shame on your GM. Whatever happened to 'Geek the mage first'?

Bulldrek.

That's what spells are for.

And it affects melee much more harshly. If you're wounded, better to cast than fight.

Edit: my breakdown doesn't hold up for the second character, it ends up being too expensive.

~J

Well...all I can say is that you in fact -can- learn to have a hightened perception/awareness. I imagine "perception tests" will be made by rolling Intuition + Perception....which would me you still have a shot at noticing things without any training...but that ex army ranger is a bit more aware of his surroundings than ted from accounting.

Actually, you can't. I've tried. Repeatedly. The standard mage gets cut apart by security long before they get into position to fireball the waste disposal plant.

And, really, the point of having melee combat is to be effective at it.

Little hint: THAT'S WHAT SPIRITS AND ELEMENTALS ARE FOR. Have someone there to guard your hoop in case someone gets too close to you.

Cool. Let me know how well they do against a move-by-wire sammy with spurs and a 6 in cyberweapons combat, backed up by a shaman who uses Power 6 spells and spirits against you, a rigger with an army of drones, and a decker altering Lone Star files to have your weapons specialists wanted for international terrorism and then calling the Star on you. And, worse, they have a respectable business as a front with automated security, run by another rigger.

People sneaking up behind the mage/shaman getting raped by spirits or elementals and the shaman being a good shot with the Pred 3 or the portable grenade launchers. It's pretty damned hard to geek the mage when they are firing grenades at you.

Typically, if you're not effective at it, you fail at that goal.

That's why you don't use fire elementals for it.

That's why most of my mages and shamans have an invisibility spell.

Aye. That's why they work together.

Not really. Lone Star will send as many units and as much firepower as they can. Assuming your specialists escape and come to attack, my group simply has the Star come to help them.

Want to try a run to find out? I'll let you handle the weapons specialists, I'll handle the rest. And, I will make it a point to be fair. We'll have someone judge it just to be sure.

Biggest flaw being he's basically moving so much slower than any other Speedster Sammie out there for more Essence cost and Nuyen