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Question on Astral Combat, Weapon Foci, and skills

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Marcus

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« on: <07-09-18/1508:57> »
So on the scale of 1 to Burning someone's house down at Christmas, how much would folks oppose the idea of errating astral combat, back to allowing weapon skills with weapon foci again rather then the astral combat skill, thus reducing the long list of skills needed by mages by 1?

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Hobbes

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« Reply #1 on: <07-09-18/1515:29> »
Meta, Mages don't need the buff. 

Rules... while it does add an additional skill needed, it is fairly simple.  Fighting something in Astral space, use Astral Combat.

.... call it getting dumped by a girl you were thinking about breaking up with anyway on Easter.

Beta

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« Reply #2 on: <07-09-18/1529:29> »
Flavour-wise, I kind of like astral combat being its own thing.  It emphasizes the strange nature of a combat where movement is so fast, damage is done by willing it as much as anything else, etc.

Mechanically, I find it really intriguing.  It would literally make a couple of character builds that I'd given up on suddenly work, it would give some mages some back up combat skills (when really they wanted astral combat) and others some back up astral combat (when really they wanted melee skills).  Hobbes is right, though, that in general mages are doing just fine.

Reaver

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« Reply #3 on: <07-09-18/1538:17> »
Every thing has a price....

And that includes what you are good at. What to be good at astral combat? That's time your not training your calculus skills. Want to be good driving a car? That's time away from working on your shooting...

No one is good at everything right out of the box. Although enough karma does solve this eventually, the fun is in gaining that karma :P
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Marcus

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« Reply #4 on: <07-09-18/1558:10> »
.... call it getting dumped by a girl you were thinking about breaking up with anyway on Easter.

Legit.
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adzling

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« Reply #5 on: <07-09-18/1945:31> »
When you astral perceive your dual natured.

When your dual natures you can attack astral things with your meat stats and skills.

As long as said astral entity is within reach you don’t need astral combat.

Finstersang

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« Reply #6 on: <07-11-18/0812:59> »
Astral Combat is hardly needed by mages. Same goes for Banishing. It´s far more effective to Combat Astral Targets with direct combat spells. I think both skills deserve to stay and receive more utility instead.

Ideas for more versatile Astral Combat:
  • Astral Blocking: Equivalent to blocking/parrying. Usable against Standard Astral Combat and other forms of awakened CC, including unarmed Attacks by Dual-Natured Beings and melee Attacks using Weapon Foci or Adept Powers
  • Astral Grappling/Interrupts/Other Ways of Binding enemies Considering astral Movement Speeds, this is badly needed to make the skill an actual threat.
  • Astral Stealth: Rules for Astral Stealth are very sparse and seem to use the Sneaking Skill. However, you can argue that sneaking is a form of Warfare as well. Consider a broader sense of the word "Combat" here. In future editions (insert 6th edition joke here), the skill might as well be called Astral Movement then.
  • Astral Running/Navigation/Tracking...: See above.
  • Options against Astral Barriers

However, I´m not totally opposed to scrapping astral combat as a skill. If so, it should stay as a specialisation to all the Close Combat skills (and to other forms of astral movement, see above).


Since I mentioned Banishing: Some ideas to make this skill more versatile as well.
  • Temporarily force a Spirit into the Astral Plane: Alternative way of disabling a spirit
  • Temporarily force a Spirit into the Physical Plane: Wanna hide in Astral Space from the Scary Chrome Guy? Don´t think so, buddy!
  • Temporarily prevent Astral beings from switching planes
  • Confining a Spirit to a Certain Location
  • Keeping a Spirits out of a Certain Location
  • (Speaking of which: Why not use Banishing as the skill that is used for creating Mana Barriers?)
  • Countersummoning: Like Counterspelling, but against Summoners
  • Options against Possession: I think there is already some kind of Metamagic, but I don´t have the books ready atm...
« Last Edit: <07-11-18/0821:21> by Finstersang »

Beta

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« Reply #7 on: <07-11-18/0921:43> »
FWIW, to make banishing more useful (we hadn't realized how problematic it was at character creation, so valuable points were sunk into it), I'm testing allowing it be used in a manner similar to counter-spelling, but versus spirit powers.  So far it seems reasonable -- it puts free actions at a premium because both that use and counter-spelling use free actions, but it does make large spirits not quite as reliably powerful, and I like what that does for game-play.

Xenon

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« Reply #8 on: <07-29-18/0937:46> »
When your dual natures you can attack astral things with your meat stats and skills.
Wait. What??

When you use astral perception you can no longer hear, see, feel, taste or smell the physical world. You can only sense the astral plane. Yes, the physical world cast a shadow on the astral that you can sense and you would still hit anything with a physical body using your physical attributes and physical skills but your strength and skill to swing a sword mean nothing when fighting a wholly astral form that doesn’t have a physical body. You need to use mental combat spells or astral combat using your mental attributes.

SR5 Astral Combat
Astrally perceiving and dual-natured charac- ters use their physical attributes and skills to fight op- ponents with a physical body, and their Astral Combat + Willpower to fight wholly astral entities.

Michael Chandra

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« Reply #9 on: <07-29-18/0948:59> »
When you use a weapon focus, page 315 lists the following rules:
Attack: Astral Combat + Willpower [Accuracy] v. Intuition + Logic
Damage: By weapon (using Charisma instead of Strength)
How am I not part of the forum?? O_O I am both active and angry!

Marcus

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« Reply #10 on: <07-29-18/1832:21> »
Yea and hence the proposal, but I don't think many get my sense of humor.   
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Overbyte

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« Reply #11 on: <07-29-18/1846:19> »
When you use astral perception you can no longer hear, see, feel, taste or smell the physical world. You can only sense the astral plane.

Why would you think this? You merely get a -2 to actions on the physical plane.

SR5 Astral Combat
Astrally perceiving and dual-natured charac- ters use their physical attributes and skills to fight op- ponents with a physical body, and their Astral Combat + Willpower to fight wholly astral entities.

Yah. That's what the book says, but I don't really like this for dual natured peeps. They still have to physically swing their sword since they aren't astrally projecting, which seems like it would require physical skills on their part.
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Kiirnodel

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« Reply #12 on: <07-30-18/1212:43> »
Yah. That's what the book says, but I don't really like this for dual natured peeps. They still have to physically swing their sword since they aren't astrally projecting, which seems like it would require physical skills on their part.

Against other creatures with a physical form, sure. That's what you would use, but against wholly Astral entities you go back to using Astral Combat. An Astral Form doesn't care how hard you can hit or how fast you swing. They move at the speed of thought, which is why Willpower and Charisma are the attributes that govern your ability to hit and deal damage to them.

Sphinx

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« Reply #13 on: <07-30-18/1331:45> »
Against other creatures with a physical form, sure. That's what you would use, but against wholly Astral entities you go back to using Astral Combat. An Astral Form doesn't care how hard you can hit or how fast you swing. They move at the speed of thought, which is why Willpower and Charisma are the attributes that govern your ability to hit and deal damage to them.

Agreed. Melee combat in physical space is based on things like mass, momentum, inertia, gravity, anatomy, technique, and physical strength, which simply aren't relevant against a wholly astral opponent. Astral combat is based on entirely different principles (magical strength, force of will, understanding magical energies), so it's an entirely different skill, even for a dual-natured combatant.

Overbyte

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« Reply #14 on: <07-30-18/1446:45> »
Against other creatures with a physical form, sure. That's what you would use, but against wholly Astral entities you go back to using Astral Combat. An Astral Form doesn't care how hard you can hit or how fast you swing. They move at the speed of thought, which is why Willpower and Charisma are the attributes that govern your ability to hit and deal damage to them.

Agreed. Melee combat in physical space is based on things like mass, momentum, inertia, gravity, anatomy, technique, and physical strength, which simply aren't relevant against a wholly astral opponent. Astral combat is based on entirely different principles (magical strength, force of will, understanding magical energies), so it's an entirely different skill, even for a dual-natured combatant.

But your sword still has mass and momentum and all those other relevant meat space things which is why I don't like the rules. The astral target is running around (at the speed of thought) in astral space but you are not. Besides, almost all dual-natured creatures (except Horned Bear and Greater Thunderbird) don't even have Astral Combat skill according to the books (SR5, Howling Shadows). I understand the rationale, I just disagree. I might agree that the resultant damage is purely astral-based, using astral strength (charisma) because that is where the damage is taking place and how hard you swing your blade doesn't matter. However, that may create a big problem for many dual-natured creatures  who have crap charisma, like the aforementioned Horned Bear who DOES have Astral Combat but does 1 damage because of their Charisma, but I suppose that is working as intended.

The same logic would apply in reverse, if an astral being attacks you when you are dual-natured, then you still need reaction and intuition to dodge because you are still moving your meat body out of the way.

Once again, I realize it is not RAW/RAI, I just simply disagree with the logic here.
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