[mrcatman]

My mage learned that the hard way last night regarding Drain. He said he had familiarized himself with the rules and then cast a Force 9 Powerball at the group and when he made his DR test, he still took 4 stun and was surprised. I'm picturing him passing out from recklessly casting or even just regularly casting.

If his Magic rating was less than 9 (which I'm presuming it was), then the drain damage he took should have been Physical. Drain is stun if the force of the spell cast was at or below your Magic rating. Otherwise, it is physical.

[ZeConster]

Actually, in 5th, it's the post-limit hits that determine whether the Drain is Stun or Physical, not the Force itself. So if your dice pool is small enough, you can overcast Indirect AoE 'safely' (provided the scatter doesn't result in you taking out yourself or an ally).

[Xenon]

True dat.

(Well, if you pick a force equal or lower than your magic rating then you will have a limit to remove excess hits so you never risk taking physical damage - so indirectly force still can be used to guarantee that you don't take drain as physical damage)

But maximum force is still magic rating x2 and number of hits is compared to magic to check if the drain is physical or not - so to overcast an indirect spell you would need a high magic rating so you can pick a high force, but you would want a low-ish spellcasting rating and not using focus as you then might risk getting more than magic rating hits on your test which will turn the drain into physical.

With a small-ish pool the target will have a bigger chance to avoid or resist the spell, but indirect LOS (A) spells don't give the defender a test.... (which is stupid).

DV of the drain is based on force though and the drain on LOS (A) spells is pretty high. Casting a Force 12 spell will cause DV12 drain. That will hurt. Bad. Even if it is "only" stun damage. And it will still "only" cause DV12 + hits damage (if you got 3 hits or more on your test).

As a reference, a grenade would cause zero drain and deal a base DV of 16P (if you get 3 hits or more on your unopposed test).

(Spell gain -Force armor penetration though, which can be pretty huge if you overcast)

[Djinnocide]

Ran my first game of Shadowrun this last Sunday, and boy oh boy, was it a mess. I ran Food Fight 5.0 (with some added flavor) for a three person party that consisted of a Street Samurai, a Decker, and a Shaman. I thought things were going fairly smoothly at first. I was rolling with the punches as they took me off script, and I had them making a few tests here and there, but when the inevitable gunfight broke out between the team and the Fratellis, things slowed down to a crawl. I kept hearing mixed things about how long combat was supposed to take, but I assumed it would've gone a little faster than this. First off, I'll be the first to admit, my note taking could've been a little better. I wasn't doing a very good job of keeping initiative straight and it wasn't until we were a couple of combat turns in that we realized that you needed to include Body in your damage soak rolls. To add to the problem of my poor preparation, I also had the added burden of a party of players who didn't really know what they could do at any given moment. I had custom made cheat sheets for each member for the general actions they could do, but it wasn't enough. I was constantly doing my best to answer questions to a game I've only just started learning while trying to keep things interesting for those without immediate questions.

I'm going to try and get my act together a little more and give it another shot soon (hopefully) this weekend, but I've still got a lot of work to do.

If anyone here has any organizational pro-tips for a fledgling GM I'd love to hear them.

[JackVII]

Running Shadowrun is pretty much like life, no organized plan survives first contact. In this case, first contact was apparently combat, which is fitting.

First and foremost, the game is pretty complicated. If you are new to running it and they're new to playing it, it is going to take a while when combat erupts as you are literally rolling dice for tests and opposition rolls to those tests for almost every single action. It can drag if you have to consistently look up the rules each time someone wants to do something.

Since you've already gone through "Trial by Combat" of Food Fight, I'd suggest cracking open the Rulebook and grabbing some of the PL0 and PL1 opponents and building a short little combat run around them, it may even only be protecting a squat from gang enforcers looking for protection money. The key being to give them some mooks so they can test a few things out. Also, try to keep the fights small and manageable at first, even if this means your runners outnumber the badguys at first. Encourage them to branch out once they've gotten the bascs down.

For you, I would suggest going to any section where they lay out a "Paint By Number"  process for resolving actions (Combat and Spellcasting definitely have this) and copying the steps into a document. There are also several charts that lay out what kind of activities take what kind of actions. If nothing else, when someone announces that they want to do something, it should help you quickly determine what the best action type to use.

[ZeConster]

If anyone here has any organizational pro-tips for a fledgling GM I'd love to hear them.

Use a dice roller to pre-create a bunch of dice rolls (between 20 and 100 results for pretty much anything from 5 to 20 dice should do the trick, and make sure to include whether it's a glitch), print them out, and when it's time for an NPC to roll, calculate how many dice they'll use, and pick the next result on the list for that many dice. As long as you don't go "well, the next result for 10 dice is 5 hits, while the next result for 14 dice is 4 hits, so I'll make the NPC do a called shot so they have 10 dice instead of 14", there's nothing cheat-y about it.

[Djinnocide]

Thanks for the tips, guys!

I think it's going to be a matter of just learning through repetition. If I'm very lucky, my players will actually spend some time learning what it is that they are capable of doing and take some of that off my shoulders.

[trunglefever]

For me, whenever I run a new RPG, the thing I try to focus on the most are combat and skill usage. Shadowrun is luckily very easy when it comes to skill tests, the only thing you need to have some quick reference for is Opposed Tests. Combat is a bit more tricky if just for the fact you also need to be aware of magic usage and how that can also affect encounters.

While you are running for new players, don't be afraid to ask them to at least familiarize themselves with the basis of their characters. It is a LOT to consume as a GM to be aware of matrix/astral/meat worlds and what can be performed. So having a little help (at least to know what to look for) from your players can go a long way. In addition, it prevents players from saying "What do you mean I take this kind of drain?" It gives them more a bit more accountability.

On the subject of initiative, just remember, everyone rolls once and then you establish passes from there. Everyone gets a first before anyone gets a second. If you need to slow down a little bit, then slow down to make sure it's correct.