I am playing in a game where a PC mage has control actions. She is rolling 19 dice on her spellcasting and rolls 14 dice on drains. We came up on a very strong opponent. All I know about this guy is he had great dodge and firearm skills and really good armor and soak. So prolly a supped up sammie or an adept of some sort. This guy was in the middle of mowing down 4 guards while easily avoiding fire from two auto turrets.
Our mage rolls in control actions him. 19 dice vs this guys willpower which even if it was 6 was not gonna be a problem. Then our mage says shoot yourself in the face twice. Our GM decides that he gets no dodge, and only armor from a helmet would help him soak which he didn't have. he actually survives the hits and our mage just keeps telling him to shoot himself in the face till he kills himself. Apparently this guy had 20 boxes of physical. This is our first run in this campaign. I feel that this is just too OP. If I was using chummer and created a non mage character. Lets say I used 900 BP. more than twice the normal and didn't care about character creation rules. As long as the guy I created wasn't a mage, our mage would have no problem just controlling him and having him commit suicide. In fact even if they had max augmented willpower of 9 then they would roll 9 dice vs 19 and would still commit suicide. Am I the only one that thinks this is just too damn OP? maybe we are doing the rules wrong, but in fact it seems that besides a hacker all characters should be mages with this kind of power and no drawbacks. yes, yes, drain, roll 14 dice to soak 3 boxes, oooooo, scary.
I am not the GM of this game, but I could tell that this guy was suppose to give us a serious issue, instead he was taken out by one action of one person. Throw in spirit concealability and our mage should have no problem eradicating almost any number of people with no threat to herself unless there is another mage. I know I am harping on this. But it makes the game feel broken that the only way to stop mages is with other mages. It takes away the fun and makes me want to stop playing. I am really trying to enjoy this. But if one avenue is obviously superior to all others I just don't see the point.