Do general dice pool modifiers effect everything (as opposed to specific dice pool modifiers like recoil) or are some things excluded.
Most tests will specify which "general" DP modifiers affect them. And, most DP modifiers will tell you what tests they affect.
For example, does negative dice pool modifiers from injury and sustained spells reduce dice pools used to resist damage.
From the book:
Wound modifiers are dice pool modifiers that apply to nearly all tests the injured character may attempt, except for resistance tests.
Emphasis mine.
Resistance tests are Damage Resistance, Drain Resistance, and Fading Resistance (I could always be missing one or two, so don't consider this an exhaustive list). These tests are unaffected by Wound Modifiers.
For sustaining:
For each sustained spell the magician maintains, she suffers a -2 dice penalty on all other tests.
Emphasis mine.
So, according to that, Sustaining penalties apply to Damage Resistance and Drain Resistance tests.
Look at it going the other way now, here's the rules for Damage Resistance Tests and Drain Resistance Tests:
Note that wound modifiers (see p. 163) do not apply to damage resistance tests.
Note that wound modifiers or sustained spells have no effect on the character's dice pool for Drain Resistance Tests.
So Damage Resistance Tests are subject to Sustained Spell modifiers, but Drain Resistance Tests are subject to neither. I'm sure plenty of GM's extend the Damage Resistance the same courtesy the RAW gives Drain Resistance. I know I do.
That's fairly specific. Am I missing other corner cases?
Only one that comes to mind is Fading Resistance tests and penalties for maintaining Threads:
Fading is protected from Wound penalties due to the above quote regarding Resistance tests. The following quote could be twisted into immunizing the Techno from Sustaining Threads:
In game terms, Fading is very similar to the Drain that magicians suffer for their magical activities.
A reasonable interpretation of that is that sustaining threads does not present a penalty to resisting Fading, if you make the analogy of sustaining threads == sustaining spells, resisting Fading == resisting Drain.
From the maintaining threads perspective:
Sustaining requires effort on the technomancer's part, so he suffers a -2 dice pool modifier to all tests for each sustained complex form.
So, technically, Sustaining Threads imposes a penalty on Damage Resistance and to Fading Resistance Tests.
As a GM, I house-rule them all to be functionally the same: Damage Resistance, Drain Resistance and Fading Resistance are unaffected by Wound and/or Sustaining modifiers.
