[PittsburghRPGA]

No alarm wards yet in 5th. Right.  Have to wait on the Magic Splat Book then.

I was going to suggest Detect Magic, Extended, except it can't detect spells once they're made permanent.  I don't believe that was intended to cover quickened spells, but more things like the Heal spell.

So, Detect [Object] the object being Quickened Spells.  Extended would only add +2 to the Drain, but would be a custom spell I think.

Or an FAQ clarification for Detect Magic and Detect Magic, Extended that Quickened Spells are still detected as an exception to the rule that permanent spells aren't detected.

Of course, it's still only 2 hits to tell what type of aura something is, and that could include a quickened spell, and then 3 hits to tell if that spell is of a Force higher, the same, or lower than the mage's Magic.

It's Assensing + Intuition, so perhaps the mage could have a Sustaining Focus for an Increase Intuition spell going on him/herself.

Other than that, I'm not seeing a lot that can help with Assensing tests.  Hmmm.

[Lynx]

The point is, and I have to say this bluntly so the point gets across.  How many people walk around with force 14 - 18 anything ? And you think that won't draw attention.  I remember playing harlequin and thinking I was a bad ass with force 11 elementals and then a force 24 showed up, it's a big difference, a different class a whole new level. I understand that as a shadow runner you see the ability to do something but I also know force 12 is not something you ignore and the next time a 'mission' throws a force 12 at you, you go oh that's normal, but I don't think you will.

The buying hits thing works out for everyone looks like

[wepv]

As for the hits on assessing, you need to make a test for each aura individually. So a security Mage watching a crowd of people will not only have to try and spot the Mage through other people, who all also have auras, but then make a ton of individual assessing tests.

Lynx, the buying hits issues has nothing to do with the force of the spell, it's it doesn't make walking around with +4 to all of your stats and magic wired reflexes 2 any harder, and missions doesnt have a real way to counter it. (Not counting gms just making up stuff to give that player a hard time, which is a separate issue which I'll cover)

I am torn on how much leeway a gm should have to adjust a mod to challenge problem players.
On one hand, if a player has a build that overshadows all the other characters and rotfl stomps the mod, that isn't good for the campaign. If it happens too much, or there is one really bad session, players will not enjoy themselves and play less. They will be less likely to get their friends into the game, missions or otherwise. I've seen it a lot in pathfinder society(the Pathfinder living campaign) at my store. Living campaigns are great gateways for new role players but a bad living campaign experience or 2 will sour them on the game itself, despite how you try to explain the differences. Most of the newer players are not comfortable meeting strangers to play somewhere ad need the living campaign to meet people to game with. So gms need to be able to keep overly powerful builds in check in a fair way.

On the other hand, gms are not all created equal. Some gms are able to do the above with very little effort and not detract from the game. Great! But no all missions gms can handle that. Not all missions gms even think its a problem. Some missions gms look at the street Sam and want to keep them in check while the quickened stat monster mystic adept is allowed to run rampant with his 57 initiative and 8+ for every stat. Not all gms will see the same problems at a table and thus allowing them too much leeway to alter a mod to fix "problems" will not always work. If fact, it will sometimes create a lot of bad feelings when the players are seeing one problem and the gm is seeing a different one.

I don't know which of these is worse. I do know I have had to bad experiences recently with mods, both involving mystic adepts with quicken spells all over themselves. One mod was played with my quickening Mage, the other was played with my street Sam. The street Sam mod was made horrible because the quickened Mage took up all of the game time due to them having 2-3 more passes each combat turn then the fastest other players in a mod that was one giant fight. There were a lot of other issues with this mod as well that all revolved around that Mage that made the mod even worse, but removing all of that, just the combat time was so unfun and boring everyone at the table was just playing games on their DS or talking amongst themselves because we were not involved in the game. The game with my Mage and the other Mage was also unfun, but not because players didnt get to do anything. We were not challenged in any way the entire mod. No one was at risk of being in combat. Nothing was a challenge. The gm didn't want to improvise a way to challenge us and the mod ended in 2 hours, with the last half hour just the filling out of logs and arguing with the one player who tried to "make the mod more interesting" by shooting people for no reason in public. It was a case of the world feeling powerless to stop us which shadowrun should never feel like. Nothing in the mod was able to deal with us and we had multiple pregens at the table, which feels wrong. 

Both of these examples lend themselves to having gms add things challenge the players that might not be in the mod. My concern is that not all gms will be willing to or even capable of doing so. I think some kind of tiered challenges in the mods themselves may help the gms who aren't willing to "wing it". Maybe instead of basing it on karma totals like older seasons did, take a page from season 4 mods. They had some encounters that only have spirits if there is an awakened character. Sometimes with a set force, sometimes with a force based on the highest magic stat at the table. That is a great mechanic to keep tables balanced. Can we push that further and include options like that for deckers/riggers/technomancers? What about an option to add more magical security based on initiation grade? Helps keep masked or quickened mages from waltzing anywhere with out at least a chance of being caught. Obviously most of the season five mods are in the works at this point so adding things may not be an option(I'm not clear on what the production schedule for these kinds of mods are, I'm only familiar with how long it took to get living greyhawk mods from concept to the hands of gms), so what about a separate document with rough guidelines for how to adjust mods to challenge players?

Sorry for the wall of txt. 

[Ian "Scotch" Magill]

As hard as it is to say, after careful consideration I don't think there is any real way to balance Quickening without reducing its current effectiveness (nerf it).  I think you should only be able to quicken a number of spells equal to your initiate grade.

[wepv]

That seems like a reasonable solution (coming from a player wit ha quickening mage). Possibly the option to take quickening multiple times to increase the number of spells you can quicken.
1x quickening you get to quicken spells = to initiate grade
each extra quickening selected gets you one extra spell that can be quickened.
Initiate grade 3 with quickening x2 and centering, you can have 4 spells quickened on you.

but it is a total house rule.... womp womp 

[Ian "Scotch" Magill]

Aye, it is hard to balance out.  But look at it this way: presume for Missions, 1 Karma (1K) and 2,000 Nuyen are interchangeable. 

The cost to initiate, if we are just buying quickening, is 13K.  The cost to buy the spell in question, 500 Nuyen, 5K to learn it.  Our total karma cost to quicken 1 spell is: 13+5+1, or 19K, or 38500 (500 nuyen for the cost of the health spell).  For an Increase Attribute spell, we could increase, say, Agility, by +3 easily (Magic 6, Spellcasting 6).  Lets also increase our strength, so that we can compare to used Muscle Replacement (the cheapest available option) and compare.  We initiate again, for 16+5+1K, or 44,500 Nuyen plus our original 38,500 or 83000 total nuyen.  A rating 3 Muscle Replacement, to give us the same +3 augmentation to Strength and Agility?  56250 nuyen 3.75 essence.  I think that is roughly comparable, considering that initiating is giving you other benefits as well and makes up 58000 nuyen of that total cost.  If you take Mentor Spirit (Bear), Specialization (Health) for spellcasting, you have 6+6+2+2, or 16, enough to buy 4 hits and get +4 to Agility and Strength for 83,000 Nuyen.  Our used muscle replacements would run us 75,000 Nuyen and cost 5 essence.  Even if we factor in the cost of the Mentor Spirit (10 karma, buying it after creation, and 7 karma for the specialization, for another 17 karma or 34,000 nuyen equivalent), we're comparing 117000 vs. 75,000 and 5 essence.  We don't buy it used?  117,000 vs 100,000 (and 4 essence).

Quickening Improve Attribute spells is still a solid option, but its COMPARABLE to cyberware... not straight up better than it.

As far as quickening in play goes... nothing prevents you from, at the start of a mod, edge-casting an improve reflexes or combat sense spell and spending 1 karma (2,000 nuyen) to quicken the spell.  You gain a massive bump, at the cost of 1K/2,000 nuyen, or roughly 10% of your final reward, but in most cases such a spell will be so absurdly powerful that it will provide you with an edge worth 10% of your final reward.  You won't get to keep it for the next module, but for the module you play in it is still a valid option and still quite powerful.