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bonuses and penalties with indirect spellcasting

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Mirikon

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« Reply #30 on: <02-06-18/2303:20> »
In world good cover could block enough of a person's aura from being seen to give them an edge in defending against magic, while partial cover does not.

More likely it is just poorly written. Can anyone from the errata team chime in?
Partial cover hides 25-49% of your body. Good cover hides 50-99% of your body. Total cover is when you're completely concealed and you go directly to 'shooting through barriers' rules, which only apply to spells if it is a Physical spell with AoE to see if the wall stands up to the fireball.

So Good cover provides a good bit of defense against spells that require LOS to hit or take effect, which is pretty much any non-physical, non-AoE spell. Physical AoEs would bypass the cover if the AoE's area covered it, so yeah, spellcasting in general works. Partial cover, however, is really only a hindrance to spells requiring an attack roll (which are almost all indirect combat spells, and the ones that aren't are melee touch attacks, which wouldn't really be bothered by partial cover anyways. Just my take on it.
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« Reply #31 on: <02-07-18/0050:44> »
I say that anything impacting the caster's roll is a no go, after all they just need to see the target to know where to throw the spell. the Defender then gets chance to avoid it the same as a gunshot so any bonuses they earn are their to use. Also part of my issue was that in the Runnign rules it says that a running target inflicts a -2 penalty to the shooter but this appears no where else and is not on the attack mod table later in the book. I can only assume this line is written in error and that running just provides a defense test bonus to the target.

Huh, you're absolutely right. The Movement rules do list a -2 to attack a target that is running (and a -4 for targetting a sprinter). That definitely seems out of place considering the fact that running gives you that +2 defense bonus.

If I had to guess, it seems like it was something that was being considered as an alternate for the defense bonus, but it never was fully integrated. That would be why it isn't on the list of attack modifiers...

Definitely something for the errata team to take a look at.

Mirikon

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« Reply #32 on: <02-07-18/1005:44> »
I would assume that it has to do with the fact that hitting a moving target is demonstrably harder than hitting one that is not moving, so someone running or outright sprinting is going to be more difficult to hit. But a net shift of 6 dice is just what a little street rat needs to avoid incoming fire while they slip away after stealing something, or when you need to sprint from cover to cover, or other such situations. One of the little things that helps people keep from getting dead (and helps GMs save certain NPCs without fudging rolls) when the lethality of SR rears its head.
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« Reply #33 on: <02-07-18/1014:08> »
Thanks for bringing it to my attention.  By the way, if anyone finds something that clearly needs errata (like directly conflicting rules) and nobody from the errata team has posted in the thread, feel free to PM me or one of the others on the team.  Anybody with "Troubleshooter" under their name is on the errata team.

Without discussing it, my input would be that running should be a defense bonus, keeping in track with my logic earlier.  It's a condition applied to the defender, so it should modify the defender's pool.  Though that brings up the question of whether sprinting should offer +4 defense (since apparently it would have given -4 to the attack).  It likely does; the only way it wouldn't is if the team thinks that being able to get more than a hit on average to your defense just by running (which anyone can do) is too good.  But, I doubt that.

As of now though, that means that with a +2 to defense and a -4 on their attack, sprinting into gunfire is a really great way to not get shot!  The average corpsec must really struggle to hit a moving target.
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