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Subtracting Dice from a Spell Casting Test to resist drain in SR4A

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UmaroVI:
Witholding dice from the test to resist drain was a thing in previous editions. References to that rule got copypasta'd in due to terrible editing, but it's not a thing anymore.

Valnar: Heal is the only spell it's useful on (because the drain caused by Heal is not Force-dependant). Otherwise, no, it's pointless and has no reason to exist.

Tagz:
It was likely a balance issue that it was taken out.  Many spells only require a single success to be effective.

Take for instance a Control Thoughts spell.  Force only caps the hits and effects how long it takes for the victim to get a chance to shake it off.  Opposing that is the victim's Willpower (+Counterspelling), typically this isn't going to measure up too great against a good mage's Spellcasting + Magic (+Foci).

The real limiting factor that will keep a mage from using this for everything is going to be the Drain, that and possibly a mad GM.  If you could take some of those dice you likely wouldn't need anyhow and then put them into Drain Resistance tests, it would make it much more efficient.

After all, on average it's 3 dice to a hit, an opponent without Counterspelling would likely only have a dice pool between 2-6.  That means on average the defender is only going to get 1-2 hits on resistance.  A mage with 12 dice doesn't really need to worry about beating (on average) the target.  If they have anything more then 10 they could safely have just applied it towards Drain Resistance, and with Foci added in it's not that hard to get pools around 18-20 dice.

I like the old rule in terms of style and theme.  But when it comes to spells that don't require high Force, don't need too many hits, and can have dramatic results...  I think that balance wise it makes more sense to not allow it.  A real shame because as a theme I love it.

Qemuel:
There is a quick mention about this in the FAQ.  Here is the quote for reference:


--- Quote ---In SR4, can you withhold dice from a Sorcery or Spellcasting Test and use those dice instead to resist Drain, as you could in SR3?

This rule was dropped in SR4—it was a special case rule that didn’t apply to any other mechanics in the game. If you happen to like it, you can of course continue to use it in your own games as a house rule. The entry for the Spellcasting Focus in SR4 had an incorrect reference to this rule that was corrected in SR4A.
--- End quote ---

So it's no longer official, but can easily be houseruled.  Bottom line is that it is up to the GM.  It doesn't seem to break anything, but since SR4 tried to streamline and correlate rules, they took it out.

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