[Lormyr]

I'm not saying magic isn't OP. I agree. Quickening is not the reason why, however.

I know that your beef is with magic in general, Quickening in specific. I thought that Hobbes was about the potential for throw away PCs, but I am beginning to think I was mistaken there.

I disagree that magic is "far more OP" than multiple simultaneous blasts, though. You don't even need the grenade launcher man, just use the multiple attacks option and split your dice pool with throwing. Even just using legal flash-bangs results in 20S AP-6 for 300 nuyen. That is every bit as bad as a Force 12 AoE spell, but with no risk of injuring yourself.

[Marcus]

Cons are always going to be something of a weird bag. Sure you will have serious gamers, but odds are you will also have pregens.
I don't think anything wrong with teaching mages to buff. Having a crew of mages just buff up and sustain spells across the tables is certainly a valid strategy. 

I would even say it' preferable, given that buffer mage could actually make pregens effective and that would great helping newbie enjoy the session. I can't tell you how many times I have seen the TM pregen select then the poor player is just bored to tears across the whole run.

But regardless, unless you show up to the con with your tables already fixed, and you have static team pre-arranged most every table gonna be a mix grab bag of god only knows what, and missions play is generally easy enough that it all works out regardless.

[Jayde Moon]

Combination of lack of understanding but also a reticence to be seen as unfairly punishing players for using their tools.

I can think of a lot of ways to crush various rules manipulation or gaming of the system... but I also don't want to alienate anybody, especially at a Con where the purpose is to showcase the game and grow our cult... er, create new fans.

Adding examples of how to deal with certain issues into either the FAQ or in the Missions can go a long way towards giving GMs the tools and the 'authority' to deal.

At the same time, we're not super interested in trying to mitigate every potential abuse, how exhausting that would be!

[Michael Chandra]

A street sam that fires semi-auto grenades kills one encounter.

I cursed at myself the one time I forgot Chunky Salsa and killed a team I wanted to knock out. -_- People are too bloodthirsty, and must be gathering Notoriety faster than Street Cred.

[Lormyr]

@Jayde

I am not convinced that any significant level of gaming the system is taking place. From my personal experiences, and what I have read here, it very much appears that some folks just like to build and play supportive PCs.

I think that continuing the pattern of small background counts and astral security/mana barriers at all corporate, government, and law enforcement sites does a solid general job at acting as speed bumps for most magic users. In addition to that, the general SOP of the Neo-Tokyo police is thorough enough that PCs looking to abuse the laws will have a hard enough time on their hands.

[adzling]

at a minimum missions must make clear that you cannot mask quickened (or sustained) spells you cast on other people.

that is not RAW and as has been pointed out by Hobbes and myself a potential game breaking buff option that can stay on a missions character for ever.

i totes understand not wanting to close off options for new players (cough channelling cough) but stopping exploits should be.

and as hobbes and i have pointed out again and again (without any good counterargument in support) masking quickened (or sustained) spells on anyone other than the caster is not RAW, is not good gaming and is in fact an exploit.

[Hobbes]

@Hobbes

But on primary characters? That is just good team support. The mage and alchemist should be magically buffing their team (not necessarily Quickening, but that is ok if they wish to spend their karma for it). The face should be helping his teammates to acquire superior gear.

I have absolutely no problem with a player who is present with that character making all the contributions they  can.  Hand out preps like candy.  Buy the Samurai an Assault cannon.  Load the decker up on Sprites.  Buff the the Gunslinger to the gills.  But if your character isn't at my table, than neither is their stuff, spirits, sprites, or spells, please.  And thanks.

And throw away characters is not the best term, sorry.  Another player's character that you play with just once (or very infrequently), for whatever reasons.  Alts, Cons, sporadic attendance, stopped playing, whatever.

[adzling]

if your character isn't at my table, than neither is their stuff, spirits, sprites, or spells..

tbh i can't believe this is not a rule for missions play, it's just cray-cray that anyone would think that they could walk up to a con table with "i got these sprites, quickened spells and borrowed panther cannon from some previous PCs i played with".

[Hobbes]

Combination of lack of understanding but also a reticence to be seen as unfairly punishing players for using their tools.

Honestly I think the social/fun aspect is typically the reason GMs don't challenge Sustained and Quickened spells.  GMs and players are peoples.  Peoples want other peoples to like them.  Telling someone, hey, you can't have your toys, is tough. 

There isn't much of a middle ground.  Sustains (Quickens especially) are pretty much on or off.  And "turning off" Quickens is often a -1 Karma for that character which is a non-trivial penalty.  Results in hurt feelings and non-fun.  And, it's a game.  We're here to have fun.

[Hobbes]

if your character isn't at my table, than neither is their stuff, spirits, sprites, or spells..

tbh i can't believe this is not a rule for missions play, it's just cray-cray that anyone would think that they could walk up to a con table with "i got these sprites, quickened spells and borrowed panther cannon from some previous PCs i played with".

Auditing an experienced character would likely take a couple hours and as quirky as Shadowrun is I guarantee you'll find at something wrong.  A grey area at the very least.  It's got to be really obvious a mistake was made, and normally a GM will let it slide for that game and just ask the player to fix it when they get a chance.  That's how I've seen it handled anyway.

"In Player we trust"  "In GM we trust".... but please don't break our game aka "Don't be a Dick". 

[Lormyr]

@Hobbes

Gotcha. I think we are on the same page now. With that being said, I mostly agree with you. I still don't mind a spell or two being Quickened on non-mages, but if a Decker landed at my table loaded to the gills with Quickened spells I'd have some questions for them. I've never seen someone try to bring in any of the other things you have mentioned without the owning player present, though. With vault of ages now, I expect we will see more alchemical preps being present, however.

Personally, I have no problem occasionally losing a Quickened spell. Sure, it costs some Karma, but the overall cost is small and that is the drawback of using that method. Your magic is sometimes at risk. I think it is pretty easy to tell the difference between a GM presenting the challenges present fairly, and one who is being a jerk and trying to penalize you for using options they don't like.

[marlocfavirzal]

I know I am coming into this a month after conversation ended, and to that end I am sorry.
I wanted to add some other view-points and suggestions to the conversation. One of my buddies was also quickening at Origin's. He only quickened health spells for people. His character concept is a support mage, so it fit with his archtype. Here are a few things that we encountered.
Sustaining: Trying to sustain spells on the other 6 people at the table adds up, quick. -2 penalty on everything you do for each spell maintained. That usually became prohibitive enough that he did not want to have 6 sustained spells out there at once. Sustained spells do not last game to game and therefor was not an issue going from GM to GM.
Quickening: As a downtime action, where you must buy hits, most mages aren't going to be able to hand out spells with 4 hits, unless they are specialized in it. He also made sure to mark down all of the numbers needed for getting dispelled/disrupted. Another thing that came up with having the quickened spells is that his SIN got checked regularly (At least once per game). {Watcher spirit notices lots of spells with his signature, tells mage, mage calls patrolman, patrol checks SIN and Licenses. As a side effect of having one of his spells on you at the time, the rest of us often got checked as well.}
Also, there was a mission that had us going through customs. He had licenses that were not recognized at the place we were going to, so he was given the option of getting new licenses or having his spells dispelled.
The 3rd way that the quickened spells were dealt with was in a combat where none of the magical people wanted to look astrally. There was a mage that was staying astral and just knocking spells until they faded. (On tables where they don't have a mage or the mage doesn't want to defend the astral, this could be very problematic.)
We at the tables accepted these as fully reasonable ways to deal with having multiple high force health spells quickened on the party.

For the gamebreaking of it, we are all experienced players and wanted the new players to have fun. We would give the new players the spells/sprites and let them shine. Our glory was in the ability to boost. (and with the pre-gens not being updated to fit into NT, we had to find creative ways to have the new players shine)

[Michael Chandra]

-1: Psyche. And 4 hits is easy with Aid Sorcery.

[Jayde Moon]

I'm hoping the FAQ updates are sufficient.