[Whiskeyjack]

I was actually considering the prospect of a few minor augments. If I stick with the MA, I don't think it will end up advisable, as it will hurt his casting rolls and potential force. For a pure Adept though, some of those augments are just more resource efficient that PP's though, as you pointed out.

Yeah for a MysAd I would only consider a few ware things worthwhile: (1) cybereyes or retinal implants for an internal smartlink, for the times you're using guns - nice but not necessary; (2) Tailored Pheromones for a Face; (3) Cerebral Boosters for a LOG-based tradition.

Regarding Indirect AoE spells interacting with Bull's statement, my focus was on the wording regarding them from pg. 283 CRB: "Area indirect spells travel from the magician to the point of detonation and then go boom. The test is like that for grenades (p. 181): a Spellcasting + Magic [Force] (3) Test with scatter of 2D6 meters. Unlike grenades, you get to add your net hits on this test to the Damage Value of the spell, but only if you beat the threshold; otherwise the spell still detonates, but the hits are used to reduce scatter by one meter per hit.."

I would love to be incorrect, but that reads to me like his ruling regarding grenades would apply since the spell states the test is the same.

I have no idea what you're really talking about. I said that the only aspect to grenades that is shared with Indirect AoEs is the need to get 3 hits on the casting test to prevent scatter. I never said that Indirect AoEs could be dodged except with the rule from Run & Gun, which is also the way to dodge grenades. Bull's comment was made in June 2013. Run & Gun lists an option to dodge grenades and indirect AoEs and it came out in April 2014. The book clearly controls.

If you think we're still in disagreement could you please write it out completely because I think we might be in agreement but are just talking past each other because of lacking context for each others' statements.

[Tarislar]

I am a pretty flexible fellow, so I am not 100% fixed on any specific aspect. I had originally intended to do just an adept, but the long term potential of the MA really grasped my attention. That said, having played around with the karma numbers at this point, I see this game is incredibly slow on advancement (not necessarily a bad thing, just how it is). Outside of convention material (which has 12 sanctioned missions), it looks like Missions: Chicago currently has 12 missions legal at the moment. I low balled playing around at 6 karma and $8,000 a mission, and even after the 12 there wasn't a whole lot of advancement. So I certainly see your point in that field. 

MA has huge potential to grow.  But missions isn't likely to give you that full potential.
There are 12 Chicago missions so far ?   I thought only 5-6 were published.  Or are you referring to the CMP's that covered the 4E/5E transition?
I think the average is around 7 Karma & $10,000.
So your looking at 3 Missions just to raise the 2 dump stat Attributes.
3 Missions gets you 4 new spells, and as a caster, there are NEVER enough spells.
2 Missions gets you 1 Initiation.
So raising your 2 dump stats, filling out you spell roster from 7 to 11, & completing your first initiation, will take you 2/3 of the season.  And that is just filling in the stuff your short on at Chargen.
The 80,000 cash,  Figure $10k is gone for living expenses over 5 months.  10-30K getting yourself a vehicle.  $10-15K getting a Sin.  $5-10K on some better Commlinks.  $10-50K in Qi/Sustainin/Power Foci.  God help you if you got into a large amount of Binding w/ all the Reagents.
All of it quickly gone just trying to bring you up to "starting level".
I'm only saying this because I'm currently dealing w/ the pain of "never having enough" of Karma or Cash to get where I really want to be.

1. Perhaps I made an error, but based off the "choose the target" section on pg. 281 of the CRB, it seemed to me that a spirit as a dual-natured being could cast spells on targets in either the physical world of astral plane. Is there more to the story I am not aware of that invalidates that?

Even if so, I don't forsee me walking around with a spirit all day sustaining spells. It would be tactic employed more for strategic swat teaming of enemies when such situations were warranted. Strictly speaking in terms of overall usefulness, it seems a lot more efficient to just unleash a Force 6 spirits at your enemies directly, barring compelling reason to not do so.
2. No idea how long it will be honestly. Our group is pretty dedicated, so I would imagine we will hit those 12 missions at the very least, and progress to the others as they become available.
3. Fair, and they are being adjusted to something more appropriate based on feedback here.
4. Both are dropped based on recommendations here.
5. Re-evaluating all of those at the moment. I intend to either work it in, or slightly alter the concept and/or archetype to possibly just adept.
6. I was under the impression based off of Bull's ruling that indirect spells can no longer be resisted with the dodge roll. Was this changed or am I mistaken? Reference here: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=11290.msg208685#msg208685 

1.  They can only affect things on the same plane.
2.  I'm sure you might, what I was saying is about the time you finally get to where you are feeling really good about your character (150Karma range), then, pop, time to retire & move on to the next season.  Missions isn't really the place to try to play the long game.  But its loads of fun IMHO for a specialist right out of the box ready to go.
6.  He's referring to AE spells.  I mentioned Lightning Bolt which is single target, & they can dodge that one.

In response to the second set of points:

1. Yeah, full auto is rough. Ranged is definitely favored over melee in this system. But then again, I never expected to be invincible. Just highly resilient.
2. Noted, and under consideration.
3. I am pretty patient on advancement, but your point is well taken. If you can't fit in what you hope by the point of the end of a career, it's probably wise to alter those hopes to something more realistic.
4. Yes.

The rigger is the least interesting of all the archetypes to me, so I would prefer to avoid it for the first PC at least. 

1.  Don't knock the CC.  Its nasty once you are in close to the enemy.  And no one is really invincible in SR.  You could be a 500 Karma Mystic & still get taken out by a 1/2 dozen fresh out of the box Chargen characters.  #'s Kills People quick.

Fair enough on the Rigger thing, just noticed that the team was missing one so I mentioned it.
They can be very useful, but a guy w/ a Van & a couple recon drones and a commlink can get their "basic" functions done as long as you don't mind not having firepower.

[Michael Chandra]

Well, for my two creds, I think most of you are missing the best part of banishing: it does not alert the summoner to the fact the spirit is gone. Yes, attacking/killing the spirit is faster, but those methods immediately alert the summoner that the spirit is gone. Banishing does not.

Really? Because I could have sworn Summoners have a magical link to their Spirits. Let's see, Spirit-Summoner Link (p. 302):

"It can communicate telepathically with the summoner,
even from astral space, so it doesn’t even have to manifest to receive orders or make reports. This link allows for communication over a distance but does not extend to the metaplanes, nor does it allow any other visual or audio connection. With this link, a summoner knows when a spirit he has summoned has been disrupted, as he will feel the loss of the link."

I'd argue the same applies when they are banished because the link will be cut off.



As for Spirits, in defense of the book: Spirit Basics notes "If a spirit wants to affect anything on the physical plane, it has to materialize first" in its second paragraph. It also says they're dual-natured while materialized, plus describing what that means. So yeah, you may want to give that section a quick read.

[Lormyr]

@WhiskeyJack

Based off your last statement, I think we are accidentally talking past each other. I think my use of the word "dodge" led you to believe I was referring to the Run and Gun rule, when I should have said "defend" to more clearly state that it was clarified by Bull that one cannot avoid most AoE effects with a Reaction + Intuition defense roll. So yeah, it seems like we are in agreement, just having trouble speaking each other's language. :p

This was all confusing for me given the back and forth on "yes you can', "wait, no you can't" in the book in various examples. The Counterspelling example on pg. 295 even mentions characters adding those dice to their standard Defense test against a fireball spell. Oi.

@Tarislar

Yeah, the figure of 12 includes: 3 currently published Missions, 4 missions from firing line, 4 missions from sprawl wilds, and welcome to the sixth world, all of which are currently legal.

I totally dig the karma concerns. I began to share them after I sat down and read over the cost of progression several evenings ago. Right now I am strongly leaning towards going just adept. The spells are really nice, but it was mostly the Spirits I wanted to play with from that angle. There is always other characters though.

In reply to bullet points #1:

1. So it would seem I am still a bit confused on this topic. Let me present my understanding, and then kindly point out where I am going wrong with it.

According to "Choose the Target" for spellcasting on pg. 281, last paragraph, it says: "A magician in the physical world can only cast spells on targets that are in the physical world. Similarly, a magician in astral space can only cast spells on targets that are present in astral space (though auras of things in the physical world can be seen, auras alone cannot be targeted). If you’re using astral perception (or you are otherwise dual-natured), you can cast spells on targets in either the physical world or astral plane. Only mana- based spells work in astral space, even if you’re in the physical world astrally perceiving the target."

So I thought that spirits counted as dual-natured, and thus could target beings on either plane from either plane if they had the appropriate P or M abilities. It wasn't until I found out from pg. 301 that spirits only count as dual-natured while materialized. That said, I can't find language anywhere that indicates that a materialized spirit could not use magic against astral entities if it had mana spells to do so.
2. Valid point, and one I am already taking into consideration.
3. Woops, I somehow read your lightning bolt example as ball lightning. My bad there.

@Michael Chandra

I did find and read that after Tarislar pointed out to me the spirit had to be tangible to sustain. That was where I discovered they only counted as dual-natured while materialized.

Unless there is other information hidden somewhere to the contrary, I do still believe they could affect both planes while materialized if they have appropriate M and P spells based off of the pg. 281 info though.

[Whiskeyjack]

This was all confusing for me given the back and forth on "yes you can', "wait, no you can't" in the book in various examples. The Counterspelling example on pg. 295 even mentions characters adding those dice to their standard Defense test against a fireball spell. Oi.

Yeah, and the unfortunate thing is that Counterspelling SHOULD do something against those AoE Combat spells. I'm not sure what at this point...maybe improve your soaking damage roll? Shrug.

[Lormyr]

I am personally not a fan of any attack form, in any system, that either does not require any sort of a roll to successfully hit, or targets a static number which is not based upon the relevant stats of the defending character. It this case, it is just as easy to hit an Agility 7, Reaction 9 elf adept with an AoE as it is to hit an ork in a wheelchair. Silly comparison I know, but the point stands. That said, it seems like both Indirect AoE spells and grenades are pretty damn deadly in this particular system as well. Both successfully hit quite easily, while grenades do a high damage hit with moderate AP, and the spells do anywhere from moderate damage and AP, to high damage and AP. The drain is rough on those higher castings at least.

But like I said, no system is perfect. This system favors offense as well, as many do, so playing defensive, while possible, is a more difficult prospect to begin with.

[Michael Chandra]

@Michael Chandra

I did find and read that after Tarislar pointed out to me the spirit had to be tangible to sustain. That was where I discovered they only counted as dual-natured while materialized.

I know. I simply disagreed with criticizing the book for being chaotic when there is in fact a simple overview with the short-hand intel available. Plenty of places where that criticism is well-justified for SR5 Core, but I wouldn't say it's deserved here.

[Lormyr]

I can certainly respect your opinion, Michael. Speaking strictly for myself as someone new to the system, I would have found it more concisely organized if all the information of astral interaction, spirits, what exactly dual-natured means, and how being dual-natured works with astral and physical interaction had been compiled together. As it is, that info is across many scattered pages.

But you are right that if I had found that section before reading the other ones first I would have cleared up this particular misunderstanding.

[Michael Chandra]

The problem with that view is that you'd be mixing things up there. For example, the Spirits section includes a lot of subsections. In your desired organization some of those sections would have to be moved elsewhere to make room for astral intersection sections, which at the same time has to be combined with rituals and spells. So you'd get an even worse clutter. Right now they simply have "Spirits Basics" with the references to each section that you may need and serves as as best a compilation as you can get without completely tearing apart other sections and making everything unreadable.

Also, I must note that my first step would be looking into the index. "Hey, Spirits Basics? Let's check that out."

[Lormyr]

That's fair enough. The only thing I would add is that the rules for astral, physical, dual-natured, magic, and how it all interacts is pretty mixed up to begin with from this new player's perspective in terms of hunting all that info down. Some of the sections point you to the other relevant sections, but some of them do not. The index is pretty useful once you know the key words to look up, though.

And on a separate note, the missed rules / controversy thread in your sig is awesome for new folks who really want to master the ruleset. Thanks for that!

[8-bit]

Yeah, the book is ... hard to learn just by reading it. Fortunately, if you have any questions, you can ask them here, or in the Rules subforum. And yes, Michael's thread is really useful.

[Lormyr]

Indeed. In defense of Michael's view though, the index is really well organized. Once I learned what key words I needed to be looking up to answer my questions it became much easier. Figured those key words out just took a few days of reading.

At this point I feel like I have a pretty firm grasp of char gen, magic, equipment, and options in combat. I don't have a clue about matrix stuff, rigger business, drone use, or technomancer stuff yet, but I'll be working on getting an understanding of those things over the next few days.

[Whiskeyjack]

At this point I feel like I have a pretty firm grasp of char gen, magic, equipment, and options in combat. I don't have a clue about matrix stuff, rigger business, drone use, or technomancer stuff yet, but I'll be working on getting an understanding of those things over the next few days.

To be super honest I wouldn't worry about that stuff unless/until you decide to play a character that does those things. It's easiest to just get in a game and learn the general rules and the rules of your particular archetype than it is to try and learn everything academically without context. As a mage the likelihood of you using the hacking or rigging rules is close to zero. The flip side is you might very well overload yourself or not remember the stuff actually relevant to your character.

And the issue of Shadowrun being a LOT to absorb with a ton of moving parts (especially granularity of gear) has been a Thing since basically always. Especially since you can come out of the gate with a TON of ware and customized gear; a lot of games (say, D&D) your basic character has very little in terms of special gear and powers, and gets more complicated as you go (but that time is a learning curve); Shadowrun just flat out starts super complicated for just about everyone.

[Lormyr]

Very true all around. I can digest those aspects a bit more slowly. Our core group often takes turns running the PFS scenarios and stuff, so I would like to be able to carry my weight in time here as well and run some of the Missions for us when my turn comes. Plus it's a good opportunity to meet new folks running for the demo team at cons and local game days.