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Another Elemental Focus Thread

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Galgano

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« on: <02-25-21/1955:30> »
Hoi. I got a question about Elemental Focus. Judging by how many Reddit threads and threads on here, people are probably sick of the questions about it.

Elemental Focus says that damage you take from drain from spells of your chosen element is of the element’s type. Does that mean if you chose fire as your element, you take fire damage as your drain? When does that damage typing take effect? Because I saw some people arguing that “since you are resisting elemental damage, then you can use elemental resistances to fight it.” They went on to say that because it’s elemental damage, then you can use armor in your resistance dice as well. What is the ruling on that? Is the drain damage classified as one type when resisting, but changes after resistance checks?

Stainless Steel Devil Rat

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« Reply #1 on: <02-26-21/1450:21> »
Book and page references are super important, especially when asking about prior editions. 


At any rate.. finally found the issue you're talking about.  The former errata lead had this to say, which doesn't answer all your questions.

Personally, I'm skeptical about allowing armor mods to contribute to drain resistance pools.  For game balance reasons.  The very, very, very last thing Shadowrun needs is mages being even more powerful, and getting to stack armor mods onto your drain resistance pool does exactly that.

As for in-universe explanations go... other than indirect combat spells your armor is ignored.  Magic affects you from inside out.  Stands to reason drain would be, too.  Ergo, gear that's not a part of you shouldn't help resist drain.  IMO.
RPG mechanics exist to give structure and consistency to the game world, true, but at the end of the day, you’re fighting dragons with algebra and random number generators.