Yes!

Aspected Magicians used to cost less than Full magicians so why shouldn't they in SR4 if you can't specifically start that way (eg making an Aspected Mage by recovering some of the BPs by taking appropriate flaws). As it is if you get 15BPs back for not being able to sling spells and being a Mage costs 25BPs so Aspected Mages costs 10BPs which is more than an Adept or Mystical Adept which they used to cost the same as.

O.K. Prospero this is how it works now , their are 6 types of Spirits , each tradition gets 5 of the 6 and calls them a different name depending on his/her traditions out look but the spirits themselves still have the same stats and powers its now just the traditions view that is different , for example here are a list of the spirit/elementals : Spirit of earth(earth elemental) , Spirit of the wind(Air Elemental) , spirit of the water(Water Elemental ) Spirit of man(mind or consciousness elementals) and the exclusives Shamans get Spirits of beasts and the Hermetics get the good 'ol Fire Elemental .

Yep that is correct both Shamans and Hermetics can Summon(the new term for 3e's shaman spontaneous Conjuring) and use Binding (the old hermetic several hour ritual style summoning) its actually really simple to do as a Magician you toss out your Magic attribute + Summoning Vs. the force of the Spirit you would like to summon , compare successes(or as they call 'em now hits) if you score more hits then the Spirit every net hit is a service it owes you , if it scores more hits then you , your summoning is unsuccessful . after that its the fun part ... drain . for summoning Drain is the number of hits the spirit scored multiplied by 2 , with a minimum of a 1 DV

an example

Aberramond the Hermetic wants to summon a force 4 Fire Elemental , so he rolls his Magic 5 + his Summoning of 4 and rolls a 1, 2, 2, 3, 3, 4, 5, 5, and a 6 scoring him 3 hits . at this time the force 4 fire elemental rolls its Force rolling a 1, 2, 4, and a 6 getting it one hit , comparing the hits Aberramond has 2 more hits then the Elemental causing the Elemental to owe him 2 services , now for drain Aberramond must resist 2DV( the elementals 1 hit multiplied by 2)

see simple as that , Binding is exactly the same except the Spirit uses his force multiplied by 2 so in the example above it would be Magic+Binding Vs. Force * 2

hope this answeres your question

[EDIT] Fixed a Typo and cleared up the example a bit

That's not a problem. Mentor Spirits are now available to Hermetics and Shamans. Or any other tradition. As new traditions are expanded upon, more and more Tradition/Mentor Spirit combinations are going to be unusable. A tradition with no Water Spirits, for instance, would gain little benefit from a Shark or Sea Mentor.

-Frank

It limits their Magic dice available to the die pools for Sorcery, Summoning, etc. But it does NOT limit, for example, the Force of the spell they cast. So a character with a total Magic (5) and 2 of those dedicated to Adept powers like Mystic Armour, the character can still cast Force 5 spells with only Stun drain and up to Force 10 with Physical Drain.

Astral Projection/Perception. It costs the Mystical Adept 10BP (or perhaps 25BP if maxing his Magic) just to get Perception.

Ok, lets say you have a magic 5 hermetic mage that throws a force 6 manabolt. It has a Drain Value (DV) of F/2, or in this case, 3.

This value is the number of boxes of damage the spell will do, though you do get the chance to desist drain to reduce it. So lets say our mage has a Willpower of 4 and a Logic of 4. That will give him 8 dice to resist the drain. Each hit on the roll reduces the drain value, and thus the number of boxes of damage. So if he rolls 3 hits, he gets no drain. If he rolls 2 hits, he takes 1 box of damage

Because the force of 6 is over his Magic rating of 5, the DV is physical instead of stun. If instead of a force 6 spell he threw a force 5 spell, the DV would have been 2 (you round down for spell drain), and the damage would have been stun instead of physical

If he were casting multiple spells, he has to split his dice when making the spellcasting test. He doesn't split his dice for resisting drain though, so the mage in the above example would get to roll 8 dice against both spells. Each spell has it's DV increased by the number of additional spell he cast though, so if he were casting 2 force 6 manabolts, the DV would have been 4 for both of them (and both doing physical damage, as the force is greater than his magic)

Exactly. Though Fireball specifically has F/2+5

Correct. Now, getting 8 hits (on average) requires 24 dice. Since the most you can ever boost an Attribute or Skill is 50% of your maximum, it's pretty hard to build someone who can casually toss Fireball:6's all day.

Let's say the mage is a dwarf, and he's gone and paid for the Quality that ups his Willpower's maximum by 1. Maxing out the stat, that's an 8. Let's say he's also maxed his Logic out (through gameplay, since you can't start with two maxed Attributes) and picked up Cerebral Booster 3 for a total of Logic:9. He's also got Focused Concentration:2, which is an expensive Quality but Willpower boosts are hard to come by so this is the best we've got.

I imagine our dwarven mage will have Initiated and/or hooked himself up to some Power Foci in order to bring his Magic Attribute back up to a 6. I'll let someone else run the numbers on how many Build Points and in-game Karma Points we've had to spend so far to make our little ubercaster; suffice to say he's not very well-rounded.

In any case, he's rolling 8 (Willpower) + 9 (Logic) + 2 (Concentration) = 19 dice to resist an 8 Drain Value. That's an average of 6.33 hits, which means typically even this tough-brained halfer is going to be taking 2 Stun boxes. He could spend 1 point of Edge to invoke the Rule of Sixes in order to likely negate 100% of the Stun, but Edge supplies aren't infinite.

On the upside, if he's somehow got his Spellcasting maxed out to 10 (6 Skill cap + 1 Quality + 3 bonus dice from somewhere) and his Magic at a 6, he's throwing 16 dice on the attack roll. That's likely 5.33 hits, which means the base incoming damage to all of the targets of his Fireball is 11 Physical, and they use only half of their Impact armor when making that Body roll.

A security guard with a Body of 6 can take 11 Physical before falling over. Put him in some Impact:6 armor, and he's rolling 6 (Body) + 3 (half Impact) = 9 dice to resist; that's an average of 3 hits.

So, on average and without spending Edge, that customized dwarf can nuke an entire room full of tough and very armored guards (and any other flammables), leaving the guards with only 3 boxes left while taking 2 boxes of Stun himself. The guards would be at a -3 penalty due to their injuries; the dwarf would be at -1.

Even if the mage's Body Attribute were the dwarven minimum of 2, he'd easily recover from that Stun an hour later.

But you've also built an expensive one-trick pony. The BP cost is significant.

EDIT: "Magician" is a 15 BP Quality. "Exceptional Attribute" is a 20 BP Quality. You can't have more than 35 BPs of Qualities; so no Focused Concentration or Aptitude to increase a Skill cap. So it'd be 17 dice to resist Drain. Ouchie.

yes they do, because it has a manifestation on the physical plane you get to dodge then soak

Nope. The caster makes a success test (not an opposed test) vs the opponents reaction.

Ranged Combat is an Opposed test.

I'm not sure that they're completely wrong per se. Rolling magic +spell casting vs the targets reaction is like a ranged combat test.


But anyways powerball, manaball, stunball are not nessicarily better than fireball. Depends on the application. If you just want to kill your target. Yeah the others are probably better. If you want to hurt him and set him on fire along with the surroundings, and or set off other combustable people ect, then fireball is the way to go.

matter of preference and tactic.

ah ok I see what you're refering to and how it could be directly translated into a threshold. Bad wording on mine and the books part there

which is why powerball, manaball etc are better. The elemental effect spells are frequently worse and sometimes better and you get to pay more drain for the glory of that. Yeah if you want to set things on fire its the only way, but there generally worse in combat with some side benefits. I can' conceive of paying more drain for that. With the possible exception of electricity effects which are fairly large extra benefits, the extra benefits don't justify the extra drain.

Off the cuff and without checking the RAW, I'd say yeah. If you can target locations, then logically it sounds like you can aim. You can aim with normal ranged combat and IC spells use those rules.

However, I could see how the game designers could have skirted that issue easily by mentioning that the spell energy isn't present until the precise moment of casting. You wouldn't have anything to aim until you were already throwing dice. Kinda like how you're unable to aim until your gun is drawn (which I don't believe they explicitly stated either).

Prepare to houserule!

You want to burn the CPU: OR 4.

You want to melt the tires, fool the camera's CCD, rupture the gastank and set the thing on fire: OR 3.

Basically I rule that unless it's a drone, a nanite, or a commlink you're probably looking at OR 3. Drones get that extra bit 'cause they're cool that way.

And honestly that's hard enough for the average mage to hit, though I suppose child's play so some of the casting monsters we see on here.

I'm starting to weigh in favour of allowing "take aim", but my personal houserule would be to only use as a way to make up for negative modifiers: You can never throw more dice than your spellcasting pool due to aim.

What a wonderful idea for a new form of metamagic