I am rereading the chapter on the Awakened World right now in preparation for tomorrow's game session. I got to page 184 and read the example of spell casting that they give. It reads as follows:
A go-ganger is about to ride Raze down with her motorbike, so Raze casts a Powerbolt at her. He chooses Force 5 and rolls his Spellcasting 4 + Magic 5 (9 dice), and gets 4 hits. The ganger rolls her Body 3 to resist, and gets only 1 hit. The base damage of the Powerbolt is 5, increased by the net hits (3) with the go-ganger taking a final damage of 8—ouch! The Drain Code for the Powerbolt is (F ÷ 2) + 1, plus 3 from the net hits, so Raze must resist 6 DV, rolling his Willpower + Logic (he’s a mage).
If Raze had targeted the bike instead of the ganger, his 4 hits would have been enough to reach the threshold of 4, as a motorbike counts as a highly processed object. Since nonliving objects cannot resist against Directed Combat spells, the bike would have taken 5 DV from the spell (Raze didn’t score any net hits over the threshold to raise the damage).
This is an example of the basic rules, but in basic rules I cannot find where the DV goes up based on the net successes.
As an optional rule presented on page 204 for Direct Combat Spells I find this:
Direct Combat spells involve channeling mana directly into a target as destructive and damaging energies rather than generating a damaging effect. Affecting the target’s being on this fundamental level with raw mana requires more focus and more power than producing basic effects; as a result every net hit used to increase the damage value of a Direct Combat spell also increases the Drain DV of the spell by +1.
Is the example on 184 using the optional rule or am I missing a step in spellcasting?
Thanks chummer!