Going back to the physical and mana spell confusion:
Physical spells are almost always indirect spells, so thats simple to explain and understand. Shoot, roll opposed test like a ranged attack, done. Can only be cast on the physical plane so on and so forth.
Whereas the mana spells as stated in their description can "only be cast on the astral plane". Typically the way this is solved is simply the magician astrally perceives, making the magician dual-natured and astrally perceive auras. Allowing 'legal' targeting and spellcasting. Thats the way I've been playing it, and thats how I make my players play it since nobody can seem to explain to me how looking at someone physically lets you target their astral aura without astral perception. Which allows more balance in my games since it decreases the physical capabilities of the perceiving mage and leaves him/her at the mercy of astral cover like mana storms or domains much like fog and rain in physical space.
One interesting though I've always had was making a mana version of the invisibility spell, allowing you to turn your aura completely invisible to prevent mana targeting. Yes the spell still outlines your aura with the spells mana, but then the mage has to dispell the invisibility spell first before he can target your aura, it really sticks it to the mage since you can't indirectly fire stunballs even if you know exactly where their aura should be.
Now as for how to shut down your nasty mages lets assume a few things that are typical:
-Stunball is mastered
-Low counterspell dice
-Has Centering
-Has a few Foci
-One or two Physical spells
Now if we break down simple responses to shut those down
-Stunball
-Mana visibility modifiers, not using this is like saying astral space is a calm and sunny day, everyday
-Any form of counterspelling
-Cut physical LOS
-Any drone
-Give the leuitenant Magic Resist 4 quality
-Low counterspell dice
-Any mage with stunball and counterspelling
-Spirits with magical Guard and counterspelling
-Enemy projecting mages, chances are they aren't percieving 24/7
-If has low banishing as well, throw an enemy possesion spirit
-Centering
-Have a guard go "He's chanting! Mage! Call Ares anti-mage division!" and everyone evac
-Have mage cast silence on chanter
-Shoot the legs of the dancer
-Has a few Foci
-Have a patrol mage spot him randomly, even when not lit it's like having alot of cyberware going through an MAD scanner.
-Give a grunt spell knack (Disrupt sustaining focus)
-Shoot the foci, a single bullet hit will make unusable for 90% of most runs
-One or two physical spells
-Visibility modifiers
-Throw dust in their eyes, forcing them to perceive astrally and not cast physically or shoot blind
Now all those are simple solutions you can throw at 'overpowered' mages, and most of them you obviously can't use all the time, but every now and then isn't bad and I'm hoping it will just give other people more ideas to add on their own. Wards themselves aren't very useful since there are so many ways in and around it and it takes alot of time to establish, but if I read correctly there aren't any rules about stacking mana barriers over each other like from spells.
One of my favorite responses to mages that think they can just spellcast their way out of everything is after about 2-3 runs they stunball everyone on the mission that was a threat I throw a guard that recognizes the mage somehow, either trained to 'feel' for astral presences (Many high end guards are) and they call in Ares Anti-Mage squad. That may not exist in the books, but it's damn well believable. I typically put them as a subsidiary assisting firewatch, but thats besides the point, send in some designated anti-mage squad.
Here's how I justify it. Regular guards are trained to secure personel and wait for back-up, not fight. Thus the call. Even if they are trained to fight to the death, if they KNOW that a team of mundanes can't do anything against a spirit why would they stay and fight a mage that has a reputation for destruction like that. I make them evacuate the building and secure it from outside. So yes the runners get what they came for, but no amount of stunballs are gonna get them out of the building with both the regular security, backup, and the newly arriving anti-mage squad, they have to give up early.
Now how I play the anti-mage squad is I have about 2 mages and 3 bodyguards for said mage. One is a spellcaster focus and the other a spirit focus. The spellcasters only real offensive spell is stunball as well, but has alot of anti-mage spells like disrupt sustaining focus, mana barrier, bind, offensive mana barrier, silence and the like. I usually make the list of spells chain together like sense removal(sight)-(When they project or astrally percieve)Mana barrier (5 meters around mage)-Offensive mana barrier (2 meters around mage, causing damage if tries to get out)-Offensive mana barrier(1 meter around mage if still resisting to contain and kill astrally). These are just my ideas and I tailor most of them to games I run or play since everyone has different rules on how each spell works. But I think that the only real reason mages become a problem is because you don't give them enough opposition to deal with. "There's always a bigger fish" is what I like to use. If you're a big bad stunballing mage, then chances are theres an equally big bad stunballing mage thats not only as good at stunballing, but he can counterspell with shielding metamagic and a shielding foci. That 14 dice pool for stunball doesn't look so tough against 22 defense pool.
