[Leodriz]

I have a few thoughts on how ridiculously unbalanced spellcasting is, and especially gets when a magician reaches higher initiation grades. The big problem as I see it is that spell casting uses magic + spellcasting while defenses uses willpower (or body) + counterspelling. That and that there ar no avoiding spells, like dodging in mundane fights.

Magic continue to rise as a magician gains power and there is no limit. The attributes for defense are capped and almost every character has either low body or low willpower.

If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
Caster gets 16 dice, defender 12. With a mana bolt that is 10 boxes almost guaranteed. With increased magic this difference only increases. This means a magic 10 char could take down a magic 20 char with the same ease. And remember, this is without overcasting. Of course you could use a mana barrier but then you would have to sit prone and wait behind your wall.

And against a mundane, do I need to get into it? The mundane would be fried with no way to defend.

Where is the balance? And don’t give me the crap about magicians being vulnerable and it’s the first to fire wins. A magician with invisible is hell to take out without sonar, and as a magician gets his (or her) first initiation he can be invulnerable to all mundane weapons less then heavy artillery (yes, even a well aimed Panther).

My points are:
Nothing stops magic, not even magic.
Magicians kills any mundane (and most wakened) with one strike.
Magicians can be almost invulnerable to physical damage.

Together this renders any mundane useless in a fight and it’s all about first hit amongst the mages.

Again, where is the balance? Please help me find a hole in my argument.

[anotherJack]

You're pretty true, Magicians have the heaviest firepower. You can balance it with background count, drones, and so. If it isn't enough, then you should modify drain base value (F instead of F/2) and/or resistance test (attributex2 instead of attribute).
About initiation, there's some techniques which allow a better counterspelling, are you sure they do not involve initiation grade ?

and as a magician gets his (or her) first initiation he can be invulnerable to all mundane weapons less then heavy artillery (yes, even a well aimed Panther).

How ? channeling ? then it's not a problem about magicians, but possession, which IS overpowered.

[Leodriz]

Ok, now I sound as if I’m all about fighting and power building, that’s not close to the truth. The problem is that this seeps into many aspects of the game. You can never have a chat or exchange of wits with your arch enemy wiz in the final moments. You got to waste him before he sees you. You can never have the über-evil, all-powerful, initiate 10 wiz standing laughing at the players feeble attempts. He is wasted by the 4 inits mana bolt.
You can’t even have a short exchange of words or offers of surrender with a guard, he might now a spell and off you without lifting an eyebrow. Oh, if he cowers, hidden behind a wall somewhere, you can shout “Get out with your hands over your head and your eyes shut and a bag over your head, and your back turned and oh, put in these earplugs I throw your way”. How fun is that?

Do you get what I’m aiming at here?

[FastJack]

Well, let's take a look.

Let's say the caster is just looking for "more power" as he initiates. Probably choose Centering, Masking, Quickening and Shielding as his Initiate powers. Helps him to resist drain, mask his powers, sustain his spells and gives a little protection from other casters.

Now, the counterspeller has focused her magic on battling other spellslingers, so she takes Centering, Shielding, Absorbtion (SM, p 59) and Reflecting (SM, p 61). Now, she not only can resist drain better, she adds her Initiate grade (+4) to Counterspelling tests with Shielding and can also attempt to absorb the mana from the spell to sling a spell back at the original caster (at reduced Drain) or reflect the spell back on the original caster.

Second, of course higher level magicians are powerful. They are supposed to be. Without Group Initiation/Tasks, to get to Initiation 4 and a Magic 10, Willpower 6, Spellcasting/Counterspelling 6, it takes a load of Karma. Assuming the PC started with 400 BP/Magic 6/Will 6/Sorcery Group 4, than they would have to spend 70 Karma on Initiation, 170 Karma to raise his Magic to 10 and 55 Karma on the Sorcery skill group. That's 295 Karma, and a LOT of survival in the Shadows to get there.

[Leodriz]

About initiation, there's some techniques which allow a better counterspelling, are you sure they do not involve initiation grade ?

Yes there is shielding, it evens it out between mages (if they got shielding). Magic is still very overpowering though.

About the invulnarabality, yes, i´m talking about possesion based traditions. Give a Vodoo priest the Channeling metamagic and have him possesed by force 7 spirit and he gets a hardened arnmor of 14...

Thinking about it guess my real problem with this is that you can never talk with someone who might me a magician and you suspect might be hostile. This makes it al about kill, kill, kill, before they kill you.

[anotherJack]

Yeah, I do know it, and agree that possesion is overpowered - or, at least, that the immunity is. It makes the magician a true war machine, beyond the sammies. Don't search balance in this, maybe you can balance a little while it's just classic possesion, by taking the control of the character, but when it comes to channeling…

[Leodriz]

Ok, so balance put aside (lets just create a team of magicians only   ) how to deal with talking to hostiles who just  might be magicians. A sam, or adept can put his weapon aside, hold his arms out and stay at a distance, you got a chance even if he´s fast. But a mage?? Even with a bag over his head and his arms tied he kills you with a thougt (if you don't allready have him in mage cuffs).

And about magicians being supposed to be more powerful? Why should a magician be so much more powerful then a equally experienced adept or sam? All other skills and attributes are capped, at a certain point you don't get better you can just broaden your field of competence.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Mages are really potent on a personal scale.  That is very true.  Offense is much better than defense, as well, and is in keeping with the overall theme of combat within the game.  What often gets ignored, however, is their rarity.  Granted, within a gaming group mages are often included, but in the world at large they remain very rare.  There will always be more shooters than casters.  Remember this, it will be mentioned later.

I have heard all sorts of people talking about invulnerable sammies or indestructible mages quite a bit over the years (the mage one is a little newer).  I, personally, never noticed that problem.  I have never noticed a problem with killing another person in Shadowrun.  The opposite is often true:  I find it hard to keep people alive.  Right now, my group is low on the totem pole for shadowrunners, so they often run into the lower end threats.  For the handful of tougher threats, they have kept their wits about them and dealt with them in an intelligent manner.  I. E. striking first and striking hard, or sneaking around the problem, or even just walking away from it.

The balance, I've found, often comes from having tough, realistic opposition.  Cover, as you know, provides protection in the form of LOS penalties.  Toss in a smoke grenade, and only the guys with thermal vision will see through it.  Also, recall that magic is a known quantity in Shadowrun.  Technology has been produced to foul up mages, such as the smoke grenade that interferes with astral sight and thus interferes with spellcasting.

I think part of the problem you may be having is with a disconnect between what makes sense in the real world and what is a standard trope in fantasy or high fantasy.  There are no evil overlords in Shadowrun.  That is because anyone acting that stupidly dies.  Seriously, the bit about the maniacal laugh?  Dead.  Kill the guy, you know he's a problem, so just kill the breeder.  Why would you give anyone a chance to kill you in the real world?  Sure, Shadowrun is a fictional setting, but that setting is the world as we know it, with just a new twist on it.  People are still people.  That stuff in the movies doesn't work in the real world and it doesn't work in Shadowrun for the same reason:  it gets you killed.  Would you give a guy a chance to kill you, the real you in the very real world?  No way.

Bullets are cheap, and guns are in plentiful supply.  As are random guys you can arm with said guns.  There are literally thousands of regular security personnel for every single capable magician (1% of the world's population can use magic, but few of them become truly proficient).  So, if some mage runs up, figuring he can just zap his way out of trouble, then the dozen or so sec guards blazing away at him will make short, short work of him.  As for capturing someone, tranq or stun weapons are also plentiful, just knock them out and deal with them at your leisure, later.  Why take the risk?

I haven't run into possession yet, although I have read up on it..  Parasitic FAB is a readily available technology.  For those guys who are waaay too tough like that, FAB works wonders.  Also, the hardened armor, while nice, is still affected by AP ratings, and you really only need to breach the armor with base damage + hits.  AP ammo and a good sniper rifle, that takes care of most problems.

[The_Gun_Nut]

Ok, so balance put aside (lets just create a team of magicians only  ) how to deal with talking to hostiles who just  might be magicians. A sam, or adept can put his weapon aside, hold his armes out and stay at a distance, you got a chanse even if he´s fast. But a mage?? Eaven with a bag over his head and his armes tied he kills you with a thougt (if you don't allready have him in mage cuffs).

And about magicians being supposed to be more powerful? Why should a magician be so much more powerful then a equally experienced adept or sam? All other skills and attributes are capped, at a certain point you don't get better you can just broaden your field of competence.

They make a couple of technologies specific for mages:  mage cuffs and mage hoods.  These disrupt the mage's concentration, preventing spellcasting (massive penalties).  Or, just use a tranq patch.  Keep him unconscious the whole time.  Who cares if he gets hooked on drugs?

If you don't care if he keeps his magical abilities, then you can burn it out with chemicals.  The trauma patch can do so, as can many of the hard core medicines available (you get a penalty to treat magic types if you want to keep their abilities intact).  You could even inject him with the parasitc FAB if you reaaaly don't like the guy.

[Medicineman]

If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
....

both must've spend about 280-300 Karma just for Initiation 4 and MAG 10 (acording to the errattaed rules)

Hough!
Medicineman

[anotherJack]

Also, the hardened armor, while nice, is still affected by AP ratings, and you really only need to breach the armor with base damage + hits.  AP ammo and a good sniper rifle, that takes care of most problems.

It does not :-/ you got the basic immunity, yes, you can breach through it, yes, but now, your bullet has to deal with the stacked normal armor and the improved Body. The guy who summon, let's say a force 5 spirit, can't be affected by any physical attack with a DV under 10 (and I'm note sure modifiers such as burst and so applies), and even if he is, he's got just 10 dice more on is armor, and 5 on his Body attribute. Good luck, little bullet !
And I don't talk about a sustained armor spell, it's gonna be indecent.

About the bad guy with maniac laugh, there's a pretty simple way to deal with it. In old shadowrun adventures, there's often a first paragraphe, in french its title is "Dites-le avec des mots", I guess in english it makes somethin like "Tell it with words" : you just "stop" the game, PC just shut up, you tell the description you need to, and then, ok, let's go.

[Leodriz]

If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
....

both must've spend about 280-300 Karma just for Initiation 4 and MAG 10 (acording to the errattaed rules)

Hough!
Medicineman

Well, we got one in the group, and two mag 9 adepts...

[Leodriz]

Ok, i buy it. You are not suppesed to stand up in a firefight  . And i'l lay it out to my group that we shout ban the channeling. That's what makes standing up in firefight possible. (Invis a bit tough still though, yeah yeah, sonar, but how common is that??

And sure, incapacitating a mage without killing him is no big problem (channeling left out).

But i would really like my group being able to talk to people and not having to kill everything on sight.

Maybe i should just start an new thread "Speaking with the enemy".

PS. No, the hits from succes or extra bullets doesn´t help against hardend as i get it. Just base DV.

[Doc Chaos]

Just to not confuse people not so versed in equipment: when he talks about "sonar" he refers to an "Ultrasound" sensor.

[anotherJack]

You don't have to "ban" channeling, just make it more balanced. The main problem in possession is the immunity, just cancel it since the mage already has his own armor, and the possesion improve his body, or divide it by twice (so F instead of Fx2 for possession), Possession is still veeeeery powerfull with a weakened immunity, but it does not allow the mage to stand in LOS of every opponent without risk.