Catalyst Game Labs > Errata
BGC Question
Marcus:
Sorry to bug you Patrick but I was wondering if you might have any thought concerning this thread: http://forums.shadowruntabletop.com/index.php?topic=27007.0
I maybe over stepping my bounds but I still think the -/+ 24 section needs some cleaning up, or at-least some clarification.
firebug:
Any skill test affected by magic would include anything that Stainless Steel Devil Rat mentioned; threshold changes, limit changes, DV changes, any part of the calculation. Then BGC is applied as a penalty to the dice pool. What Kiirnodel mentioned is also accurate. There's no rule about any powers being "treated like foci", it's just a binary of "if magic is helping you do this thing, you get the penalty".
I'm not sure what you're confused about. Yes, the penalties really do theoretically go up that high and down that low. The book explains how, once you get to around -16, there starts being effects that are dangerous and can be felt by anyone, not just mundanes. You can't just compare penalties to wound penalties as for whether or not they are reasonable. Being totally in the dark is as much as being "on the brink of death", as you put it, but it really does penalize you at -6.
Also there's no rule about acclimation automatically happening, unless you think Forbidden Arcana having a random buddhist quality off-handedly mention the back half of what would be a major rule wasn't a mistake. (I'm sure it was.)
Adepts unfortunately do get completely stomped by background count as it reaches higher amounts in the current rules.
Marcus:
--- Quote from: firebug on ---I'm not sure what you're confused about. Yes, the penalties really do theoretically go up that high and down that low. The book explains how, once you get to around -16, there starts being effects that are dangerous and can be felt by anyone, not just mundanes. You can't just compare penalties to wound penalties as for whether or not they are reasonable. Being totally in the dark is as much as being "on the brink of death", as you put it, but it really does penalize you at -6.
--- End quote ---
We are going to have to agree to disagree on this one Firebug, there is no way +/- 24 is acceptable. There is nothing in the game that has that sort of swing. It just doesn't fit with history of the system, and it leads to the question Why hasn't some nut job toxic with +15-20 magic bonus location unleashed the equivalent of force 30-40 nuke spirit on some city? I'm at a loss as to how you don't see the issue with this.
firebug:
Easy. Because positive background count doesn't make you any stronger. It boosts Limit. That nut-job toxic (who by the way, isn't exactly immune to pollution or radiation or what-have-you and is probably going to die) can't actually achieve anything he couldn't achieve in normal mana levels, he just could cast most of his non-combat spells at F1 since their limits would be so high. He's really not that much more of a threat, though it would be almost impossible for any average non-toxic mage to cast anything in that area. Not that they'd be able to go there without getting sick in the first place. Did you think positive background count gave dice pool bonuses?
Stainless Steel Devil Rat:
I can't speak for firebug, but I can speak for why I don't have a problem with a potential 24 dice penalty:
Because it's only a potential penalty. As I said in the other thread, you'd have to not just get creative but expend some serious resources to even get into a mana void of that power level. I'm pretty sure the intent is they don't even exist on earth so if you don't have a space ship, you don't need to worry about a 24 dice penalty.
Going by the benchmarks (SG pg 31) the most a runner mage should plausibly ever be dealing with is 4-6. Anything higher would in of itself be a major plot point the adventure revolves around. Deckers and Technomancers routinely are threatened with more Noise than that (which is probably why it's easier to negate Noise penalties than BGC penalties).
--- Quote from: firebug --- Did you think positive background count gave dice pool bonuses?
--- End quote ---
I have to admit that I did. I reread the section on pg 32 and see you're right on that.
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