Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: SDTroll on <11-15-19/2040:29>
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I was reading the chapter on preparations, thinking it would make an enchanter more interesting to play, when a few questions came up.
1. Should an enchanter get spells like a sorcerer or full mage, just be unable to cast them, so she can put them into preparations?
2. How does sustaining a preparation work? Does the enchanter have to sustain it as if they had cast the spell normally? This makes sense to me, but I couldn't find a rule on it.
3. How can you use a preparation with a contact trigger? It seems like once it was made, the mage can't move it without it going off. Do you have to make it where you want to place it? Can the creator touch it without setting it off? Can an enchanter leave it dormant until he puts it where he wants it, then activate the trigger? Again, couldn't find any rules on it.
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1. That is how I have been treating it. In my understanding they all choose from the spells the same way but Full Mages can use them as preparations for alchemy as well as sorcery, aspected mages [sorcery] can only use them as spells, and aspected mages [enchanting] can only use them for alchemy.
2. That's a good question. I'm not sure about this one really.
3. It says on page 150 that a contact trigger is set off by a living thing touching it. So If you were making a bullet magical, you could have something nonliving like a drone load it instead of you. Or you could use a specialized tool that keeps you from touching in. Or even thick enough oven mitts (depending upon your gm). Personally if you have an enchanting shop/facility I would say that it has a robotic arm or the requisite specialized tools to do this safely.
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Alchemist Spell Formulae, Ritual Spell Formulae and normal Spell Formulae are different formulae and take different free slots. So a Full Mage that wants to both prepare Heal and cast Heal, needs to get it twice as far as I can gather.
Sustaining of preparations is indeed missing. Based on SR5, you may want to houserule '<Potency> minutes'. They don't come with sustaining penalties, since the preparation sustains itself.
There were extra modifications in SR5 in a splatbook that would let you not trigger your own Contact triggers, but generally you need mechanical support (or putting it into a weapon rack or such).
I strongly suggest letting your GM look at the Vault of Ages in SR5 (a magical fridge that safeguards Potency), maybe add to that a rule that they lose 1 Potency per 2*Potency weeks instead of 2*Potency hours in the fridge so you can't build up an unlimited supply.
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Alchemist Spell Formulae, Ritual Spell Formulae and normal Spell Formulae are different formulae and take different free slots. So a Full Mage that wants to both prepare Heal and cast Heal, needs to get it twice as far as I can gather.
There were extra modifications in SR5 in a splatbook that would let you not trigger your own Contact triggers, but generally you need mechanical support (or putting it into a weapon rack or such).
I strongly suggest letting your GM look at the Vault of Ages in SR5 (a magical fridge that safeguards Potency), maybe add to that a rule that they lose 1 Potency per 2*Potency weeks instead of 2*Potency hours in the fridge so you can't build up an unlimited supply.
Guess I missed another rule. I only saw under Preparations that you have to know the spell, nothing about it being a different formula. My questions was, do enchanting adepts get any spells at character creation? The rules say sorcerers get starting spells, but nothing about the enchanters.
I suppose the rules on contact triggers depends on how you read a living thing contacting it. Could I make a preparation of a flower inside a vase and carry it safely as long as I didn't touch the flower? Can I make a bullet in the street sam's gun into a preparation and, as long as she doesn't touch the bullet it won't go off? For a full magician it seems like you have plenty of options, but for an aspected enchanter, it gets quite a bit harder.
I didn't play much 5th edition, so I'm working with 6th Ed pretty much exclusively. I played first through 4th extensively, but never found a 5th ed group. It doesn't look promising for a 6th edition group either, but I'm hoping to at least understand the rules.
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Alchemist Spell Formulae, Ritual Spell Formulae and normal Spell Formulae are different formulae and take different free slots. So a Full Mage that wants to both prepare Heal and cast Heal, needs to get it twice as far as I can gather.
Got a page number for that, cuz i don't remember seeing it in SR6?
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Pg. 131:
Make a Learning
test, which is a (Sorcery or Enchanting, depending
on the type of formula) + Intuition test.
This shows that there's a difference between spellcasting formulae and enchanting formulae. It remains to be seen if that difference means anything more than what skill you use to learn the formula... it could mean that you need two formulae to learn the same spell for spellcasting and enchanting, or it could mean that the same spell simply comes in two formats and either works for both. It's a point of clarification that remains to be made.
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Pg. 131:
Make a Learning
test, which is a (Sorcery or Enchanting, depending
on the type of formula) + Intuition test.
This shows that there's a difference between spellcasting formulae and enchanting formulae. It remains to be seen if that difference means anything more than what skill you use to learn the formula... it could mean that you need two formulae to learn the same spell for spellcasting and enchanting, or it could mean that the same spell simply comes in two formats and either works for both. It's a point of clarification that remains to be made.
So, do enchanting adepts get formulae at character creation? And can full magicians take spell casting and enchanting spells as part of their initial allotment, assuming they want to make preparations?
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That all still awaits formal rulings.
But in my opinion, it shouldn't hurt anything to just presume that aspected enchanters get just as many spells as do aspected spellcasters.
It's more of a stretch to presume whether full magicians can use both sorcery and enchanting on every spell they know, or if they have to designate each one (and in effect having to take each spell twice to do both). But, every table will have to make that decision for themselves anyway, so go ahead and presume whichever way you prefer. My personal opinion on that is it's easier for everyone to just presume that the different formula types exist solely to make it so that you can pick your stronger skill with which to learn the spell... i.e. you don't have to learn each spell twice to use it in sorcery and enchanting.
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Continuity Error!
Someone thought they were gonna get rid of the distinction and someone else disagreed...
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I'm treating 'free spell formulae' as 'each is either a ritual, a spell or a preparation formula' and see no reason why aspected enchanters shouldn't get free ones.
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I started to read that chapter hoping that 6E did something to increase the standing of alchemists in Shadowrun...
But someone must have gone through the 5E rules for alchemy and deemed them too much fun to play, too powerful and in desperate need of a nerf, because a troll could not throw a baby through a car in 5E without hitting an alchemy mage, right? Favorite spellcaster type all around, followed by ritualists. ???
Preparations now take -hours- to complete, are still resisted by the preparation, still have a higher drain and you can only use 2 dram to counteract this? So as an alchemist you‘ll be hard pressed to start a run with more than one preparations, because the first one probably won’t last until you are finished with the second?
Help me out here, I don’t quite get the appeal of it... Or are we simply not supposed to play alchemy mages?
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The only thing I can guess is that the rebalance happened with the Vault of Ages and other advanced alchemy boosts in mind.
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The only thing I can guess is that the rebalance happened with the Vault of Ages and other advanced alchemy boosts in mind.
6th Edition is sounding more and more like a 5th edition update.
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6th Edition is sounding more and more like a 5th edition update.
And as a result, it´s not even that. It would almost be a 100% copy&paste-job, if it weren´t for the increased prep time and the (accidental?) omission of the self-sustain-clause (which basically yeets every sustained spell right out your spellbook if played strictly RAW). There isn´t even a hint on how the fancy new edge system ties into it.
Want to play an Alchemist in 6E? Either talk to your GM about some massive houserules or hope that some upcoming supplement fixes this drek. It was the worst option in 5th Edition, and it got even worse in 6th.
Edit: Forgot the slightly better Reagent use. Hardly enough, but it‘s a small step in the right direction.
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The only thing I can guess is that the rebalance happened with the Vault of Ages and other advanced alchemy boosts in mind.
6th Edition is sounding more and more like a 5th edition update.
No more so than SR5 was an update of SR4: A lot of mechanics stayed similar, but a lot of things significantly changed as well.
As for Alchemy, I can imagine someone looking at Preparations in SR5 and going 'well, the creation time is too little because with the Vault of Ages you can just stack tons', which is what I built SWAT teams around actually. However, I'd have at least increased the time a Preparation lasts without such a tool, since that tool is not yet present.
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The preparation rules seemed cool when I read them, but most of the best ideas I had were lost when there was no way to sustain spells. That was the biggest bummer for me. Still interesting, but not nearly as useful.
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IMO, Enchanting/Alchemy should have gotten a major overhaul. And besides that, it shouldn´t have been crammed in the Core Book (just like ritual spellcasting, btw). This is clearly advanced stuff that many newcomers will skip anyways. But alas...
If you want a quick fix to Alchemy, consider this:
- Actually, keep 6th Editions increased prep time.
- When finishing a Preparation, the enchanter can choose to spend reagents to increase the Potency of the Preparation. 1 Dram of reagents increases the potency by 1, with a maximum increase equal to the initial potency of the preparation.
- Preparations with a sustained spell will automatically sustain the spell for [Potency] minutes after being set off (like in 5th Edition)
There are multiple other suggestions and solutions out there, but this works best for me. It adds a better use for reagents, which fits the flavor and allows alchemists to buff up the dice pool of the finished preparation so they can compete with regular spellcasting (with a little price tag added, though). The increased prep time in 6th Edition is quite a nerf, but it would have been justified if the actual preparations would turn out better in turn. I rather have alchemists with a handfull of actually usefull preparations (and only a handfull of dice rolls in prep time!) than alchemists with 2 Dozens of semi-useless cantrips.
PS: Want a really good laugh about the absolute state of Alchemy in 6th Edition? Look at the Fixation Metamagic ::)
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"advanced stuff that many newcomers will skip anyways" is kinda irrelevant given how many of the folks that bought the core rule-book are returning and long-term players rather than newcomers though.
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This is clearly advanced stuff that many newcomers will skip anyways. But alas...
I consider myself a newcomer but loved the idea of playing an alchemist.
Alas...
Putting my GM hat on, I would've gone with something much simpler.
1. Have items go off with a dicepool of Magic+Enchanting. Have them resisted just like spells. Have them use reagents just like spells (though spent at the time of making the preparation). You know...make them work using the same standard mechanic as spells.
2. Have type of trigger and extra effects lower this dice pool
3. Keep time to prepare long. Ignore drain altogether because of this.
4. Allow 'on the shelf' preparations to last forever...but limit the number a mage can have prepared at one time to their Magic to balance that.
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The only thing I can guess is that the rebalance happened with the Vault of Ages and other advanced alchemy boosts in mind.
6th Edition is sounding more and more like a 5th edition update.
No more so than SR5 was an update of SR4: A lot of mechanics stayed similar, but a lot of things significantly changed as well.
As for Alchemy, I can imagine someone looking at Preparations in SR5 and going 'well, the creation time is too little because with the Vault of Ages you can just stack tons', which is what I built SWAT teams around actually. However, I'd have at least increased the time a Preparation lasts without such a tool, since that tool is not yet present.
Or they could like change the vault of ages so it can’t be exploited like that. Keep it at minutes so alchemist can function. Because whether minutes or hours if the vault comes back as is your swat teams can still do this. It just more time consuming on their downtime.
Both alchemy and ritual magic need a full rewrite to be functional for players. That may be the intent though. They could be meant as pure NPC mechanics.
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I don't think 6E uses Alchemical formulae as separate things anymore. Not that I've seen so far anyway. If you know the spell, you know the spell. Rituals and Foci are still different formulae though.