[8-bit]

No, not the player resisting 12P drain.

He means the 12P drain you'd take from trying to dispell a quickened F12 Increase Reflexes.  Any NPC would be stupid to even try if they knew.

Ah. I was under the impression he was talking about the player. My bad.

Yes, the NPC would probably not even attempt to dispel it. One assensing to determine Force, and they'll realize it's more trouble than it's worth. NPCs have survival instincts too.

[Marcus]

Look if your determined to dispel a quickened spells there are ways to deal with serious amounts of drain. Not the least of which is just having the opposition show up with an effective magic rating equal to the force of the Quickened spell (Power Foci for example), yes that does not effect your drain pool, but going from P to S is biggest safety step. If your prepared to boost your drain stats, you can break into the 20 die range, and with planing there are ways that you could mess with concerning backgrounds.

The issue isn't if you can dispel it, the issue is should you.  If you go through the method to make this happen it's going to be clear  you made some fairly serious NPC(s) with a very limited focus. 

Quicken spells are serious, they represent a serious power advance at the table, and require serious investment on the part of the player. Quickening in moderation, is perfectly reasonable imo. If all your player does with it, is boost init, I'd just let it go.
But if your player start getting out of hand with it, then I'd chat with them about it. If that fails, well there are ways, to achieve it.

[firebug]

Look if your determined to dispel a quickened spells there are ways to deal with serious amounts of drain. Not the least of which is just having the opposition show up with an effective magic rating equal to the force of the Quickened spell (Power Foci for example), yes that does not effect your drain pool, but going from P to S is biggest safety step. If your prepared to boost your drain stats, you can break into the 20 die range, and with planing there are ways that you could mess with concerning backgrounds.

Power foci won't effect whether the drain is physical or stun.  They literally do nothing except for add dice to any pool that includes MAG--  The benefit is the fact that a huge number of pools benefit from that.

The issue isn't if you can dispel it, the issue is should you.  If you go through the method to make this happen it's going to be clear  you made some fairly serious NPC(s) with a very limited focus. 

Quicken spells are serious, they represent a serious power advance at the table, and require serious investment on the part of the player. Quickening in moderation, is perfectly reasonable imo. If all your player does with it, is boost init, I'd just let it go.
But if your player start getting out of hand with it, then I'd chat with them about it. If that fails, well there are ways, to achieve it.

The issue is that they really don't require a serious investment.  They require 1 Karma after spending 13.  That is not a lot.  It's as much as it'd take someone to bring one skill from 6 to 7.  Boosting initiative is a huge deal, I don't know how you can think going from having "solid initiative that requires a sustaining penalty or takes up a focus" to "the highest initiative in the game, hands-down, for 1 Karma" isn't a big deal.  Sure, if maybe they only quicken one spell, it's not disruptive but...  The question is why?  It's a minor investment after an initial relatively low investment.  If you're not specifically limiting them to just one spell, or giving them set restrictions, it's going to be really hard to tell what's going too far, and what's just the obviously great choices to improve your character.

I actually had a player tell me, even if he learned every relevant attribute-boosting spell with Karma and got dispelled every two or three runs, he'd still be fine with it because of how incredibly more cost-effective it'd be than the way anyone else could get +4 to the attributes they want (and spells can do attributes nothing else can touch, like Charisma).  I really can't blame someone for not taking advantage of the just blatantly beneficial ability that's always a good choice for initiation early on (as it's powerful and doesn't scale with initiate grade).  I feel like it's up to the GM to say what limits they're putting on it, or else it's going to get jumbled and the PC will either have to just choose to be less capable and more vulnerable than everyone else just so they don't get left behind.  Unless they're specifically going for that "mediocre medium" kind of thing where it's like "don't be so bad you're fired, but don't be so good they ask more of you..."

[Marcus]

It involve initiation, purchasing all the spells, and then actually putting them up. That's not a small investment. Depending on how many spells that could total to the better part of 100 karma.

As to someone being on with them being dispelled, If someone is ok with killing their progression that's really on them.

Well it depends how you look at It. It is cheap if you look at it from the view of what you would pay to get them another way. But your accept a high level of risk, your not getting that invested karma back. So i guess i'd compare it to a cyberlimb. You can get a lot stats out of it for a relatively low cost, but your taking a chance on losing it.

[firebug]

It involve initiation, purchasing all the spells, and then actually putting them up. That's not a small investment. Depending on how many spells that could total to the better part of 100 karma.

It's open ended.  Saying it could take 100 Karma means nothing.  It doesn't take 100 Karma to be powerful.  The fact that you could potentially spend 100 Karma in it is a good thing not a drawback of Quickening.  And most players will not have to purchase spells, I've seen many magicians made, and any buff spells they want?  They pick them during character creation.  Unless your character has anti-foresight and you actively avoid taking useful sustained spells, saying "They need to spend a bunch of karma on spells first!" isn't legitimate.  Starting with a Increase Attribute spell, some defensive spell (armor, combat sense, deflection...  More than one or all of these) and Increase Reflexes is not a stretch.  The mage needs a way to stay alive, and it's not like these spells are only useful after you get Quickening.

As to someone being on with them being dispelled, If someone is ok with killing their progression that's really on them.

Killing their progression?  They likely spent 1 Karma to quicken it (in which case, see the point I mentioned above) or 12 Karma, in which case it's just not getting dispelled any time soon unless the GM has just decided they want it gone with no reasoning.  That's 30 dice to resist being countered.  Someone on the level of the PCs might be able to pull 18, an exceptionally skilled person could probably get up to 24...  It's possible, but so is simply dieing.  It's an absolutely acceptable risk--  You're a shadowrunner for crying out loud.

So i guess i'd compare it to a cyberlimb. You can get a lot stats out of it for a relatively low cost, but your taking a chance on losing it.

What games you do you play where you have a chance of regularly losing a cyberlimb?

[Sendaz]

What games you do you play where you have a chance of regularly losing a cyberlimb?

Ask Bull sometime.

[firebug]

Ask Bull sometime.

Heh, I just imagine it like...  "God damn it!  I already lost it once!  Let's go get another one from the van..."

[Tarislar]

Looking at this from a different perspective.

Here's a question.

Is the problem here really that Quickened Spells are too powerful....or....would a better fix be to change how dispelling works?
Because honestly, I am starting to feel that the real issue here is that dispelling has way too many negatives attached to it.

I'm also thinking that a negative effect to Quickening that makes some sense to me would be to make a person resist the drain a 2nd time, basically to mirror how Binding requires a 2nd Drain after Summoning.

Thoughts?

Perhaps a combination of changing dispelling AND more drain from quickening?


Actually, now that I think about it, I'd like to see a change in how several of the Meta Magics work.
The benefit is often 1 die at first initiation.  I'm honestly thinking that is too little.
What if things like Shielding/Centering were to offer you Grade x2 dice instead?
And in turn have quickened spells be capped at Grade x2 as well?


Comparing...... Current Way...at grade 1.
Initiate-1 + Centering/Shielding = 1 Drain/Defense Die
Initiate-1 + Quickening = Infinite Locked Spells  (Admittedly they do invest in karma for spell & quickening.)
This is badly gimped IMHO & it just makes quickening a near default as first choice if only for the not capped by grade issue.

v/s

New Way:
Initiate-3 + Centering/Shielding/Quickening = 6 Dice for Drain, 6 Dice for Defense, 6 Quickened Spells (all w/ the 2nd drain to quicken them)

I know this will boost the power of high level initiates but really, if your investing THAT much karma into advancement, I'm not seeing the issue.


Its several changes but when all totaled it seems like it might be more balanced.
Easier Dispelling + Drain for Quickening + Cap on Quickened Spells + Increase in other Meta Magic Dice = Balanced ??

[halflingmage]

I think something that is not getting enough attention here is the fact that having very high force quickened spells, or multiple such spells, makes you a giant walking 'mage over here" sign in astral.  Trying to get someone like this past magical security is like trying to get a full body cyborg past a MAD scanner.  It closes off alot of operational options. There aren't enough Con skill dice to explain why the janitor is tricked out like a combat mage.

[Namikaze]

Heh, I just imagine it like...  "God damn it!  I already lost it once!  Let's go get another one from the van..."

I hope that the next augmentation book has rules for modular limbs.  Pop my forearm off, and replace it with a giant axe.  Oh, no need for an axe?  I'll just pop that off and put in the snake fingers so I can pop that lock easily.  I can see it now, one of my players will get a cyberlimb and carry around a backpack full of forearms, and nothing else.

[Sendaz]

I hope that the next augmentation book has rules for modular limbs.  Pop my forearm off, and replace it with a giant axe.  Oh, no need for an axe?  I'll just pop that off and put in the snake fingers so I can pop that lock easily.  I can see it now, one of my players will get a cyberlimb and carry around a backpack full of forearms, and nothing else.

be even better if the back pack had a quick change feature where you just reach back up over your shoulder like you were drawing a sword hung on your back and the backpack has some unit pop up to decouple and swap out the limb end so you don't have to mess around with digging out the right forearm.

Normally a simple action, but with wireless ON it's just a free action.

[Tarislar]

I hope that the next augmentation book has rules for modular limbs.  Pop my forearm off, and replace it with a giant axe.  Oh, no need for an axe?  I'll just pop that off and put in the snake fingers so I can pop that lock easily.  I can see it now, one of my players will get a cyberlimb and carry around a backpack full of forearms, and nothing else.

Yeah...... I Love this idea!! 

[Novocrane]

If I were looking to dispel a quickened spell on someone, I'd try to get them into a background count that is aligned to me (bonus to dispel limit), but not the quickened spell user. (penalty to spell force)

[Marcus]

It's open ended.  Saying it could take 100 Karma means nothing.  It doesn't take 100 Karma to be powerful.  The fact that you could potentially spend 100 Karma in it is a good thing not a drawback of Quickening.  And most players will not have to purchase spells, I've seen many magicians made, and any buff spells they want?  They pick them during character creation.  Unless your character has anti-foresight and you actively avoid taking useful sustained spells, saying "They need to spend a bunch of karma on spells first!" isn't legitimate.  Starting with a Increase Attribute spell, some defensive spell (armor, combat sense, deflection...  More than one or all of these) and Increase Reflexes is not a stretch.  The mage needs a way to stay alive, and it's not like these spells are only useful after you get Quickening.

100 Karma is more then full reward of a season of adventures in Missions play. I think character restriction on missions is 200 Karma? Something like that. So 100 karma represents a reasonably high bar, as is.

On the topic of Spells in all my years of playing SR i have never actually seen anyone start with all the Improved Attribute spells. I have seen plenty take 2 or 3. But not once more then 4 of them. So I'm not prepared to agree fully on that.

What games you do you play where you have a chance of regularly losing a cyberlimb?

I both played and run games where this has happened with fair regularity. It got meaningfully easier in 5th. Losing Cyberlimbs is bad, but I was in game where a character lost his wired reflexes. That was just horrible, for so many reasons.

I need to go look up what happens when Quickened spell run into dead magic zones. I think that might be easiest way to do it. But I think it just kills the guy.

The other thing that I have only ever seen taken  advantage of once is that in a game where Cash to Karma is active, a player could easily pay a the team's wizard to quicken a spell on him/her. I have only even seen this done once in a game I was involved with. But every time a caster gets quickening I'm interested to see if folks catch on to this. Have you guys seen this?

[8-bit]

On the topic of Spells in all my years of playing SR i have never actually seen anyone start with all the Improved Attribute spells. I have seen plenty take 2 or 3. But not once more then 4 of them. So I'm not prepared to agree fully on that.

Increase Reflexes
Increase Drain Attribute
Increase Willpower
Combat Sense

Not that strange of a setup. Drop Combat Sense, and you still have a fairly standard setup. Sure, you are going to want all the Increase Attribute spells, but that's a long term plan. Assuming you want to quicken the top 3:

Initiation for Quickening - 13 Karma
Force 12 Increase Reflexes - 12 Karma
Force 6 Increase Drain Attribute - 6 Karma
Force 6 Increase Willpower - 6 Karma

Total: 37 Karma

Let's assume the character saves 7 Karma at chargen. That's only 30 Karma to get. Assuming 6 Karma a run, that's 5 runs. That's not a lot of investment to get a really large return.

The other thing that I have only ever seen taken  advantage of once is that in a game where Cash to Karma is active, a player could easily pay a the team's wizard to quicken a spell on him/her. I have only even seen this done once in a game I was involved with. But every time a caster gets quickening I'm interested to see if folks catch on to this. Have you guys seen this?

All the time. It's not a big deal, in my opinion, as long as the player's actually play their characters (aka, don't just give 10,000 nuyen for a 5 Karma quickening; it's going to cost 20-40k for it). It's part of business, and the mage has to be willing to risk their spell being detected and traced back to them, at some point.


Also, totally unrelated, but my favorite use of Quickening is the Shapechange spell. Turn into a cat or something, spend 1 Karma to quicken, say goodbye to the rest of your life as a metahuman.