Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: Leodriz on <09-14-10/1217:24>
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I have a few thoughts on how ridiculously unbalanced spellcasting is, and especially gets when a magician reaches higher initiation grades. The big problem as I see it is that spell casting uses magic + spellcasting while defenses uses willpower (or body) + counterspelling. That and that there ar no avoiding spells, like dodging in mundane fights.
Magic continue to rise as a magician gains power and there is no limit. The attributes for defense are capped and almost every character has either low body or low willpower.
If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
Caster gets 16 dice, defender 12. With a mana bolt that is 10 boxes almost guaranteed. With increased magic this difference only increases. This means a magic 10 char could take down a magic 20 char with the same ease. And remember, this is without overcasting. Of course you could use a mana barrier but then you would have to sit prone and wait behind your wall.
And against a mundane, do I need to get into it? The mundane would be fried with no way to defend.
Where is the balance? And don’t give me the crap about magicians being vulnerable and it’s the first to fire wins. A magician with invisible is hell to take out without sonar, and as a magician gets his (or her) first initiation he can be invulnerable to all mundane weapons less then heavy artillery (yes, even a well aimed Panther).
My points are:
Nothing stops magic, not even magic.
Magicians kills any mundane (and most wakened) with one strike.
Magicians can be almost invulnerable to physical damage.
Together this renders any mundane useless in a fight and it’s all about first hit amongst the mages.
Again, where is the balance? Please help me find a hole in my argument.
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You're pretty true, Magicians have the heaviest firepower. You can balance it with background count, drones, and so. If it isn't enough, then you should modify drain base value (F instead of F/2) and/or resistance test (attributex2 instead of attribute).
About initiation, there's some techniques which allow a better counterspelling, are you sure they do not involve initiation grade ?
and as a magician gets his (or her) first initiation he can be invulnerable to all mundane weapons less then heavy artillery (yes, even a well aimed Panther).
How ? channeling ? then it's not a problem about magicians, but possession, which IS overpowered.
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Ok, now I sound as if I’m all about fighting and power building, that’s not close to the truth. The problem is that this seeps into many aspects of the game. You can never have a chat or exchange of wits with your arch enemy wiz in the final moments. You got to waste him before he sees you. You can never have the über-evil, all-powerful, initiate 10 wiz standing laughing at the players feeble attempts. He is wasted by the 4 inits mana bolt.
You can’t even have a short exchange of words or offers of surrender with a guard, he might now a spell and off you without lifting an eyebrow. Oh, if he cowers, hidden behind a wall somewhere, you can shout “Get out with your hands over your head and your eyes shut and a bag over your head, and your back turned and oh, put in these earplugs I throw your way”. How fun is that?
Do you get what I’m aiming at here?
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Well, let's take a look.
Let's say the caster is just looking for "more power" as he initiates. Probably choose Centering, Masking, Quickening and Shielding as his Initiate powers. Helps him to resist drain, mask his powers, sustain his spells and gives a little protection from other casters.
Now, the counterspeller has focused her magic on battling other spellslingers, so she takes Centering, Shielding, Absorbtion (SM, p 59) and Reflecting (SM, p 61). Now, she not only can resist drain better, she adds her Initiate grade (+4) to Counterspelling tests with Shielding and can also attempt to absorb the mana from the spell to sling a spell back at the original caster (at reduced Drain) or reflect the spell back on the original caster.
Second, of course higher level magicians are powerful. They are supposed to be. Without Group Initiation/Tasks, to get to Initiation 4 and a Magic 10, Willpower 6, Spellcasting/Counterspelling 6, it takes a load of Karma. Assuming the PC started with 400 BP/Magic 6/Will 6/Sorcery Group 4, than they would have to spend 70 Karma on Initiation, 170 Karma to raise his Magic to 10 and 55 Karma on the Sorcery skill group. That's 295 Karma, and a LOT of survival in the Shadows to get there.
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About initiation, there's some techniques which allow a better counterspelling, are you sure they do not involve initiation grade ?
Yes there is shielding, it evens it out between mages (if they got shielding). Magic is still very overpowering though.
About the invulnarabality, yes, i´m talking about possesion based traditions. Give a Vodoo priest the Channeling metamagic and have him possesed by force 7 spirit and he gets a hardened arnmor of 14...
Thinking about it guess my real problem with this is that you can never talk with someone who might me a magician and you suspect might be hostile. This makes it al about kill, kill, kill, before they kill you.
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Yeah, I do know it, and agree that possesion is overpowered - or, at least, that the immunity is. It makes the magician a true war machine, beyond the sammies. Don't search balance in this, maybe you can balance a little while it's just classic possesion, by taking the control of the character, but when it comes to channeling…
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Ok, so balance put aside (lets just create a team of magicians only :-[ ) how to deal with talking to hostiles who just might be magicians. A sam, or adept can put his weapon aside, hold his arms out and stay at a distance, you got a chance even if he´s fast. But a mage?? Even with a bag over his head and his arms tied he kills you with a thougt (if you don't allready have him in mage cuffs).
And about magicians being supposed to be more powerful? Why should a magician be so much more powerful then a equally experienced adept or sam? All other skills and attributes are capped, at a certain point you don't get better you can just broaden your field of competence.
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Mages are really potent on a personal scale. That is very true. Offense is much better than defense, as well, and is in keeping with the overall theme of combat within the game. What often gets ignored, however, is their rarity. Granted, within a gaming group mages are often included, but in the world at large they remain very rare. There will always be more shooters than casters. Remember this, it will be mentioned later.
I have heard all sorts of people talking about invulnerable sammies or indestructible mages quite a bit over the years (the mage one is a little newer). I, personally, never noticed that problem. I have never noticed a problem with killing another person in Shadowrun. The opposite is often true: I find it hard to keep people alive. Right now, my group is low on the totem pole for shadowrunners, so they often run into the lower end threats. For the handful of tougher threats, they have kept their wits about them and dealt with them in an intelligent manner. I. E. striking first and striking hard, or sneaking around the problem, or even just walking away from it.
The balance, I've found, often comes from having tough, realistic opposition. Cover, as you know, provides protection in the form of LOS penalties. Toss in a smoke grenade, and only the guys with thermal vision will see through it. Also, recall that magic is a known quantity in Shadowrun. Technology has been produced to foul up mages, such as the smoke grenade that interferes with astral sight and thus interferes with spellcasting.
I think part of the problem you may be having is with a disconnect between what makes sense in the real world and what is a standard trope in fantasy or high fantasy. There are no evil overlords in Shadowrun. That is because anyone acting that stupidly dies. Seriously, the bit about the maniacal laugh? Dead. Kill the guy, you know he's a problem, so just kill the breeder. Why would you give anyone a chance to kill you in the real world? Sure, Shadowrun is a fictional setting, but that setting is the world as we know it, with just a new twist on it. People are still people. That stuff in the movies doesn't work in the real world and it doesn't work in Shadowrun for the same reason: it gets you killed. Would you give a guy a chance to kill you, the real you in the very real world? No way.
Bullets are cheap, and guns are in plentiful supply. As are random guys you can arm with said guns. There are literally thousands of regular security personnel for every single capable magician (1% of the world's population can use magic, but few of them become truly proficient). So, if some mage runs up, figuring he can just zap his way out of trouble, then the dozen or so sec guards blazing away at him will make short, short work of him. As for capturing someone, tranq or stun weapons are also plentiful, just knock them out and deal with them at your leisure, later. Why take the risk?
I haven't run into possession yet, although I have read up on it.. Parasitic FAB is a readily available technology. For those guys who are waaay too tough like that, FAB works wonders. Also, the hardened armor, while nice, is still affected by AP ratings, and you really only need to breach the armor with base damage + hits. AP ammo and a good sniper rifle, that takes care of most problems.
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Ok, so balance put aside (lets just create a team of magicians only :-[ ) how to deal with talking to hostiles who just might be magicians. A sam, or adept can put his weapon aside, hold his armes out and stay at a distance, you got a chanse even if he´s fast. But a mage?? Eaven with a bag over his head and his armes tied he kills you with a thougt (if you don't allready have him in mage cuffs).
And about magicians being supposed to be more powerful? Why should a magician be so much more powerful then a equally experienced adept or sam? All other skills and attributes are capped, at a certain point you don't get better you can just broaden your field of competence.
They make a couple of technologies specific for mages: mage cuffs and mage hoods. These disrupt the mage's concentration, preventing spellcasting (massive penalties). Or, just use a tranq patch. Keep him unconscious the whole time. Who cares if he gets hooked on drugs?
If you don't care if he keeps his magical abilities, then you can burn it out with chemicals. The trauma patch can do so, as can many of the hard core medicines available (you get a penalty to treat magic types if you want to keep their abilities intact). You could even inject him with the parasitc FAB if you reaaaly don't like the guy.
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If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
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both must've spend about 280-300 Karma just for Initiation 4 and MAG 10 (acording to the errattaed rules)
Hough!
Medicineman
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Also, the hardened armor, while nice, is still affected by AP ratings, and you really only need to breach the armor with base damage + hits. AP ammo and a good sniper rifle, that takes care of most problems.
It does not :-/ you got the basic immunity, yes, you can breach through it, yes, but now, your bullet has to deal with the stacked normal armor and the improved Body. The guy who summon, let's say a force 5 spirit, can't be affected by any physical attack with a DV under 10 (and I'm note sure modifiers such as burst and so applies), and even if he is, he's got just 10 dice more on is armor, and 5 on his Body attribute. Good luck, little bullet !
And I don't talk about a sustained armor spell, it's gonna be indecent.
About the bad guy with maniac laugh, there's a pretty simple way to deal with it. In old shadowrun adventures, there's often a first paragraphe, in french its title is "Dites-le avec des mots", I guess in english it makes somethin like "Tell it with words" : you just "stop" the game, PC just shut up, you tell the description you need to, and then, ok, let's go.
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If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
....
both must've spend about 280-300 Karma just for Initiation 4 and MAG 10 (acording to the errattaed rules)
Hough!
Medicineman
Well, we got one in the group, and two mag 9 adepts...
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Ok, i buy it. You are not suppesed to stand up in a firefight :P. And i'l lay it out to my group that we shout ban the channeling. That's what makes standing up in firefight possible. (Invis a bit tough still though, yeah yeah, sonar, but how common is that??
And sure, incapacitating a mage without killing him is no big problem (channeling left out).
But i would really like my group being able to talk to people and not having to kill everything on sight.
Maybe i should just start an new thread "Speaking with the enemy".
PS. No, the hits from succes or extra bullets doesn´t help against hardend as i get it. Just base DV.
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Just to not confuse people not so versed in equipment: when he talks about "sonar" he refers to an "Ultrasound" sensor.
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You don't have to "ban" channeling, just make it more balanced. The main problem in possession is the immunity, just cancel it since the mage already has his own armor, and the possesion improve his body, or divide it by twice (so F instead of Fx2 for possession), Possession is still veeeeery powerfull with a weakened immunity, but it does not allow the mage to stand in LOS of every opponent without risk.
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If you have two identical magicians (for simplicity no extra foci or exceptional attributes, which both cold have) let’s say both have initiation 4, magic 10, willpower 6, spellcasting 6 and counterspelling 6.
....
both must've spend about 280-300 Karma just for Initiation 4 and MAG 10 (acording to the errattaed rules)
Hough!
Medicineman
Well, we got one in the group, and two mag 9 adepts...
Lord! How long has this group been playing? ;D
Maybe you could think about retiring the characters and creating new ones if the power PCs are too much of a problem?
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With that much karma, you could build a wicked mage-killing adept or mystic. Echolocation, Spell Resistance, and a good Weapon Focus will seriously cramp your mages' style.
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Ok, i buy it. You are not suppesed to stand up in a firefight :P. And i'l lay it out to my group that we shout ban the channeling. That's what makes standing up in firefight possible. (Invis a bit tough still though, yeah yeah, sonar, but how common is that??
And sure, incapacitating a mage without killing him is no big problem (channeling left out).
But i would really like my group being able to talk to people and not having to kill everything on sight.
Maybe i should just start an new thread "Speaking with the enemy".
PS. No, the hits from succes or extra bullets doesn´t help against hardend as i get it. Just base DV.
Extra bullets don't help, but the extra hits do, per the rules on pgs. 149 (modified DV) and 295 (hardened armor) in SR4A and pgs. 140 (modified DV) and 288 (hardened armor) in SR4. So both called shots and extra hits count for overcoming armor with the attack's DV, but not bursts. This makes well aimed sniper shots absolutely devastating.
If you want you're players to talk to people, then create a mission where they have to talk to people. Don't make a mission that can be resolved by violence (although, honestly, almost everything can be solved by violence if you really, really want it to ;D). Have them try to convince a mark to spoill the beans about some important information at a dinner party, or within a well done con/sting operation. You can't expect someone to stand there and listen to someone else's rant, not when they are the enemy and can be silenced easily. Make it so that they are outside of a situation where violence can be applied. Don't punish them for using common sense.
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Also, the hardened armor, while nice, is still affected by AP ratings, and you really only need to breach the armor with base damage + hits. AP ammo and a good sniper rifle, that takes care of most problems.
It does not :-/ you got the basic immunity, yes, you can breach through it, yes, but now, your bullet has to deal with the stacked normal armor and the improved Body. The guy who summon, let's say a force 5 spirit, can't be affected by any physical attack with a DV under 10 (and I'm note sure modifiers such as burst and so applies), and even if he is, he's got just 10 dice more on is armor, and 5 on his Body attribute. Good luck, little bullet !
And I don't talk about a sustained armor spell, it's gonna be indecent.
That's why you don't fire one bullet, and you don't do it from 10 feet away. A few hundred yards away in concealment means that they can take their time to line up the shot and deal maximum damage. They also have the time to take another if the first doesn't work. Also, the damage from that shot is pretty overwhelming. For example:
Barrett 121 (it seems to be popular) does base 9 damage. Called shot boosts it up by 4 to 13. Armor piercing or anti-vehicle ammo improves AP by 4 more, for a total of -8 AP. Let's go ahead and use someone with a good skill of 4 and agility of 4 using an improved rangefinder and a smartlink (a specialist would have more skill and a better gun, but let's only go halfway for now). That's a base 10 dice with the link, +2 for aiming -4 for the called shot. Without going to extremes he can auto 2 hits or roll for 2 or 3 hits on average, not including edge. The target can't defend against it, because he doesn't know it is coming. This produces a minimum damage of 15. In order for this not to be a threat, the target needs at least 53 total armor + body to deal with it rolling average or 68 total body + armor to auto it (after AP). This is with minimal shooting skill and hits. A lucky shot from someone tweaked out for it (elf with 13 agi, 7 skill + 2 specialization, enhanced articulation and reflex recorder with positive qualities and gene tweaking) will have 24 aimed dice without edge use. This is just the sniper shot.
Heaven forbid someone sics another magic type on him. The spirit is still vulnerable to banishing as normal (he gets no special bonuses), and if he does get kicked out, he cannot reinhabit the channeller until the sun next rises or sets. And if he only has that one trick, he's dead.
In old shadowrun adventures, there's often a first paragraphe, in french its title is "Dites-le avec des mots", I guess in english it makes somethin like "Tell it with words" : you just "stop" the game, PC just shut up, you tell the description you need to, and then, ok, let's go.
That always feels like railroading. It makes for some player frustration, even if they agree to it. Most players will let you describe the scene and even let the opposition speak a word or two, but I know of too many that will want to headshot the baddie while they are talking. If you really want to have someone rant away while the players are there, an illusion spell sent through a fiber optic network works fine. Or just have him contact them on their commlinks. Much safer than standing out in the open waiting to get shot.
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Bradd - Fortunately no one in the grou are that combat orinted or power building. We try to broaden the field of competence instead. For exampel a forcepoint in hardware makes the adept a nice lock cracker. As a large we roleplay more than we fight, can spend hours on the group hanging around a bar or something.
Gun nut - Or instead of 50+ dice you have him possesed by a force 10 spirit = 20 hardened... but then, hay, what mage walks around outdoors in broad dayligt with a high force spirit as baggage... Yah, sniping works agains everything that shows itself.
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True enough, but there are plenty of things that drop armor by half, some then apply AP to it, as well. Granted, these are pretty exotic, but if you are having trouble with an exotic yourself, then by all means use the exotic stuff.
For less exotic, elemental effects (fire, electicity, acid, cold) drops armor by half, including hardened. Chemicals still affect the possessed, the body doesn't become immune to them, and hardened armor doesn't help for that at all. The spirit might be immune to sarin gas, or to nanotech, but the meat body isn't.
The long and the short of it is this: possession mages are potent (very much so). They might need some tweaking even, rules wise. But they aren't invulnerable to mundane attacks, just really resistant. I have yet to run into anything that good old fashioned bullets don't take care of.
Also, I would like to know if anyone can find a specific page that states that spirits are immune to stun damage. I'm having a hard time finding it. Hardnened armor doesn't grant immunity. In fact, the only thing I have found that says anything about being immune to stun is for vehicles. Anyone else find anything on it? (Hard evidence please, like page numbers and paragraph headers.) This would make them vulnerable to a slew of new possibilities.
EDIT: Found an entry in Street Magic that explicitly talks about spirits taking stun damage. So, stunning a spirit is possible. Electrical attacks are looking more and more potent (Stick'n'Shock 4tw).
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So, for my part i'm satisfied and can close this thread. I have gotten a few tipps on balancing it all up and finding new angles to look at it from. Thanks all.
One last note.
@Gun nut - 4E Coorebook page 288 Immunity
A critter with Immunity has an enchanced resistance to a certain type of attack or affliction. The critter gains an "Armor rating" equal to twice its Magic agains that damage. This Immunity Armor is treated as "hardened" protection (see Hardened Armor above), meaning that if the Damage Value does not exceed the Armor, then then the attack automatically does no damage.
Make of this what you want 8)
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That's only for Critters with Immunity, though... Not all armored opponents.
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Yes, but that´s what a spirit is (as I get the rules), a critter with the "Immunity to normal weapons" power.
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And the armor is still subject to modification from AP and elemental effects. So a gun with SnS rounds will do 6s electrical damage which will cut the hardened armor in half. That force 10 with 20 points of hardened armor just got it dropped to 10 points of hardened armor. If the attacker generates 4 net hits, then the target takes the FULL EFFECT.
A flame thrower cuts the armor in half and has a healthy base damage before net hits come in (8P for the normal sized one, 6P for the "pistol" version). And there's also a sonic rifle that does some nice stun damage that ignores armor. Then, for the truly exotic, you have laser weapons (half armor for those, too).
Then there are the monofilament weapons (whips, bolas, etc.), the rather exotic heavy weapons (gauss anyone?) that drop the armor in half and has a nasty AP modifier (granted, those are vehicle weapons, but still). As long as we are talking heavy weapons, an inferno rocket has a base 12 damage and cuts armor in half, the Zapper Static Discharge rocket (more electrical damage) that drops armor by half, chemical grenades (hope you have chemical seal), white phosphorous grenades...
And these are only the mundane tricks (and I have many, many more). Banishing works just fine on the spirit; it gets NO special bonuses other than number of services (better bind the guy, a lot). And still, we come back to my favorite: Parasitic flourescing astral bacteria. Yay for infecting astral and dual natured beings with painful death.
In short, there is always a way to deal with the target.
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But problem is you may not only have over-powered possession mages in the team, so when it comes to the others characters to deal with these weapons, what do they do ? it's a common problem when you've got a gap between characters power : if you adjust the opponent's power to the most powerfull of your players, then if it's "balanced" with the most powerfull character, it's quite deadly for the others. See that this mage will probably have among the highest scores in both Body and Reaction due to possessions' bonii, so he may be the best dodger/tanker in the team.
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What's a bonii?
I don't see it as a big problem. I see it as a sign that the runner team (and it is a team) can handle some disproportionally powerful opposition. Let the possession mage go deal with some of the big nasty, the others can use it as a distraction or as a means of escaping.
And who's to say that the other side can't have a possession mage? By the same reasoning, the players have to take it up a notch in order to deal with one guy, and find ways around him. That's "unfair" to the normal sec goons who earn their wages the hard way, by gum!
It all reinforces a point which I have stated many, many times in several different ways: Shadowrunners do not engage in stand up fights. Period. Anyone who wants to do something that moronic has earned the death they asked for. The possession mage can take a lot more punishment, absolutely. But he's not invulnerable, and sneaking in and out is always the best option. The firepower is for that frenzied quick run out of the target zone.
I think it boils down to whether you think all runs should be balanced for the party, or if common sense should dictate what the opposing force should consist of. If the players are choosey and use foresight, then they will only take on things they can handle, I.E. are "balanced." Or, if the fecal matter has impacted the rotating aerodynamic screw, get the heck outta Dodge, to live and fight another day.
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What's a bonii?
Plural form of bonus.
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No, that's bonuses. See here http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bonus (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/bonus). Bonii doesn't exist in the English language. It looks like it might be, but it is not. Don't know if other languages use it, however.
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Okay thanks. In french, bonus is still a latin word, so if you use it correctly, you use the latin plural, which is bonii. I thought english language kept the latin form.
EDIT : oh yes it did : http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bonii
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Not surprising. Two different sites saying opposite things. Lemme check Webster.
Webster's uses bonuses as well. Here http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bonus (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/bonus).
Urban Dictionary is the Wiki of dictionaries. Written by random people. Not to say that they don't know, and might even have experts chiming in, but it still leaves certain words suspect. Oh well. Bonii sounds slightly phallus. Phallii?
EDIT: And that is the latin, according to Webster.
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Hmmm, it seems to be just "phalli". Don't ask me why, latin's studies are far…
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It's gotta be one of those weird things that pop up in languages. Like "I before E except after C."
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It's gotta be one of those weird things that pop up in languages. Like "I before E except after C."
I before E except after C or in Weird or when it sounds like AY or ...
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Plural of bonus is "boni" in german, guess we stick to latin...
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Looks like an "across the pond" thing, then.
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Look at those silly Europeans trying to figure out the rules for American English.
Like we even HAVE rules. ;D
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English doesn't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.
-James Nicoll
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Gun nut - Or instead of 50+ dice you have him possesed by a force 10 spirit = 20 hardened...
Which does you exactly nothing against a called shot from Barret loaded with APDS or AV rounds doing a minimum of 14P damage with -8AP.
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I wouldn't say 6 to 7 success more than a standard character is nothing.
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What do you mean 6 or 7? He just needs one. The -8 AP drops hardened armor down to 12. The called shot drives the damage up past the modified hardened armor and thus full damage is taken.
It makes me curious, though. In which order is armor affected? Or is it all affected equally in small amounts?
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Yes, the shooter just need one success, but as the target, you take a standard character, with a decent armor (equal to higher than 8, it's not like it would be hard), then you take the same, but possessed. The possessed one will benefit average 6-7 successes more than the standard one on his resistance test since he rolls 20 dices more. Whether you apply the AP to the immunity or the worn armor does not change the gap of dices pools between the two characters. So no, it does not do exactly nothing against the super-called-shot-of-the-death-with-a-super-powerful-weapon-and-super-ammo.
If you have to guess an order, I'd say the spirit's immunity applies only to the character's body (it doesn't posses his clothes), so it's nearly the last armor unless he has something under his skin. But it doesn't change anything about the attack DV, no problem, it's over 20, the character takes damages as normal.
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The burden of hits is on the target, though. Even if he has 20 dice to roll more than the other guy, then that is still only 6 or 7 damage less that he takes. The base 15 damage still translates into a huge hit, and starts putting on penalties. A second, quick, called-shot-to-the-face will likely produce another hit for another chunk of damage. Now the guy is at a distinct disadvantage, because (1) he cannot see where the attack is coming from and (2) he's already walking around with damage modifiers. If the spirit pops off his Concealment power (because, why wouldn't you?) then the sniper now has a pretty hard time of just seeing the guy.
If I were the possession guy, I would bail on that situation. Sure, I just survived a sniper shot (possibly two!) but that is no guarantee that I'll survive the next 3 seconds.
And all this is assuming that there isn't more than one sniper team.
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True. Now compare it to a normal character with same amount of experience : first shot, the character is dead, end of the story. See the gap ?
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No, I don't. If you have brought that kind of attention upon yourself, where the hiring of snipers is necessary, then you have earned it.
Now, tell me what else the possession mage can do, besides cast spells and summon spirits? Same as other mages, pretty much, and they had to belong to a traditon that allows channelling metamagic, and had to purchase the metamagic. And still all he can do is be tough.
A street sam spends money and gets that, he doesn't need to spend any karma. Recall that you can upgrade armor to be hardened. And dog pile a lot of it on, by spending money. The mage has to bind the spirit, as well, and have a goodly number of services available. Which also costs money. Armor tends to be cheaper than binding ritual equipment. Especially the crazy stacking kind. And, again, those services can be depleted, as normal, by someone with banishing.
There is also an RP aspect that some folks are forgetting: Most spirits hate to be bound. Only the possession traditions of magic could possibly have exceptions (the Loa from voodun is an example). Long term service "beefing up" the mage may become grating on the spirit, especially if all the mage does is treat it as a meat shield. It has to be a partnership, and using any power expends a service. If any mage wants to make up a possession tradition and flat out ignores the role playing aspect of it, then slap him/her with the appropriate penalties.
I see possession as powerful, but rare. I haven't had anyone try to abuse it in my games, but then, I feel what's good for the goose is good for the gander, and my players know it. If they start abusing their power, then I have ways of dealing with it.
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You could too ask me "what a possession mage can do, besides magic ?", it'll be pretty the same type of question.
The point is possession traditions allows a mage to gain an extraordinary resistance, extremely high attributes without any implant or adept power, a free skillwire for 3/4th of the active skills, and he already have heavy firepower since he's a mage. He probably beats the streetsam mano-a-mano, he's an incredible infiltrer without even trying, since he has a very high agility attribute, he can emulate skills he never put karma in at the spirit's force rate, and can add concealment, he can move with incredible speed, would he have matrix abilities he would be a one-man team.
This make such characters hard to handle for GM, because they break a basic rule which is that all PC must have their place, their role in the team, and when a character's ability are totally overwhelmed by another, it's hard for him to find his place, to have a role in the team.
That's why there is a BP system, to allow characters to have very similar global power, but applied to different areas. It's not designed to allow some character to have one or two areas of expertise, and others to be masters in nearly all areas.
Of course, the GM can handle it, but it's much more hard than when you got a pretty similar global power among characters and no redundant functions in the team.
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You can never have the über-evil, all-powerful, initiate 10 wiz standing laughing at the players feeble attempts. He is wasted by the 4 inits mana bolt.
Thats one badly build iniation level 10 mage if that happens.
Iniation level 10 mage can have whole lot of dice for counter spelling:
Willpower 7(more is possible) + Counterspelling6 + 2 from specialication + 2 from mentor spirit + 10 from shielding + force 6 shielding focus + 6 from a spirit using aid sorcery = 39 dice for counter spelling and with absorotion metamagic can on avarage absorp 13 points of force from incoming spell, which he can use to slower the drain value of his own spell with 13(for example casting a force 16 napalm and only having to resist 2 points of drain)
To affect that guy your iniative 4 mage needs on avarage 3 more dice and he has maybe:
Magic 10 + spellcasting 6 + 2 from specialication + 2 from mentor spirit = 20 dice, so he needs to get 22 more dice to hit him and he also needs to cast spells at force higher then 13 or he just absorps them fully.
@the_gun_nut, you definedly can't ugrade armor to be hardened, that would be totally broken
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The old gel packs used to just upgrade armor to hardened. And milspec armor used to be hardened. Had to check the current specs, and it looks like gel packs don't work the way they used to.
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IIRC they just add +1/+1 to worn Armor
with an added Dance
Medicineman
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Ok, i know that there is allways a way to kill anyone, hey, eaven Dunkelzahn got assasinated (by a nuke, but stil.)
Magicians at large and possesion tradition especcialy are still overpowered compared to other caracters. A mage with soummoning, possesion or not, allways got the skills he need at hand. Why have a thief character when you can conjure a task spirit with hardware and lockpicking. Why have a street sam when a spirit can do the job etc. A magician with summoning is a whole party in himself, hardly fun for the other players who, eaven i specialized, get cicked in allmost every field by the mage. Oh, lets all play spirit summoning mages and shamans and get a virtual army of spirits to do all the work.
Luckily i don't think my players have discovered the power of spirits, though i believe none of them would abuse it in that way. We are all for the roleplaying part anyway.
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Spirits have their drawbacks, so they aren't the perfect tool for every job.
Dunkelzahn wasn't assasinated. He sacrificed himself to create a major artifact that would be capable of stopping the Horrors incursion into the world centuries before the mana level would normally allow them.
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Spirits have their drawbacks, so they aren't the perfect tool for every job.
Dunkelzahn wasn't assasinated. He sacrificed himself to create a major artifact that would be capable of stopping the Horrors incursion into the world centuries before the mana level would normally allow them.
Nope, they aint perfect for every job. But neither is any other caracter. Magicians with summoning are stilll much more versatile then any other character.
It was quite a while since i red the book, but dindn´t big D have himself assasinated or some such?
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It was quite a while since i red the book, but dindn´t big D have himself assasinated or some such?
"Or some such" is the short answer, yeah.
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Way, way, WAY too much backstory to get into here to bring everyone who hasn't read the Dragonheart Trilogy up to speed.
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I'm gonna have to read those books one of these days...
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Dragonheart trilogy is pretty bad when read on the first degree. A lot of info on great plots, but the hero is just a Mary sue, and the whole thing isn't very subtle, it, to my point of view, very hardly finds its place in the grey universe of the sixth world. It's more a "pulp".
But, if you consider the novels are written from the hero's point of vue, very simplist and manichean because he has a simplist and manichean mind, it becomes a lot more interesting, and easier to make it fit with a non manichean universe. Take it like "starship troopers" should be, even if it probably isn't the author's intention, and it becomes nearly good.
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What anotherJack is trying to say is that it's a "fanboi's dream novel". Meaning, some of us SR fanboi's love the damn thing even if it ain't Shakespeare (or even Shakespeare's brother Tony). ;)
BTW, I'm a fan of most of Jak Koke's novels, so no insult meant to him... ;D
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Spirits have their drawbacks, so they aren't the perfect tool for every job.
Dunkelzahn wasn't assasinated. He sacrificed himself to create a major artifact that would be capable of stopping the Horrors incursion into the world centuries before the mana level would normally allow them.
He was assassinated until a crap story retconned it because someone couldn't cope with the concept of someone killing a great dragon. :)
Honestly the dragon heart trilogy turned an awesome mystery of how this could be done into a pile of suck. It went from a wow, there is something out there to boring metaplot IE/great dragons rule everything blah blah, who cares anymore. And heck I generally like great dragons(hate anything elf though)
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No, it was always metaplot. What was seen in the sourcebooks was just what everyone else in the world saw, and the novels were the story of what, who, and why.
I've never gotten the impression that the great dragons or the immortal elves ruled everything. My impression was that they were trying to control events, but that there are simply too many people in the world to do so openly. So they have to really hug the shadows in order to get what they want done and survive. But there are too many unknowns and "X" factors out there.
The story of the Dragonheart is a story of two sets of ambitions colliding, but even with everyone's carefully laid plans (the big names, that is) things don't always go their way. Ryan Mercury almost gave up on it, and Mr. Darke's assistant almost ruined his plans. Of course, Mr. Darke likes to play Zanatos Speed Chess, so he wouldn't have been hurting too badly. But Burnout was definately the fly in Darke's ointment.
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I'm honestly not too familiar with Possession based mages, but here's my two cents. Mages in Shadowrun are like mages in D&D or Jim Butcher's Dresden novels. Give them time to prep and they're nigh invincible. In the case of possession mages they can be good at any given thing with the right spirit riding them. Even normal mages with foci can muster an impressive offensive and defensive line but:
1. They have to muster it, which takes time and
2. That wears them out.
So your average mage isn't going to walk around with shields up and guns drawn (so to speak) unless he has a reason to suspect trouble. He's not going to have too many bound spirits because this is not only time consuming but dangerous if one of them slips. Your average Sammie on the other hand is walking around armed, armored and dangerous all the time. This has its own set of consequences. In general the reaction to a prepped and ready for battle mage, an angry sammie with a Panther canon, a corp military team or any other overwhelming force is to get out of dodge.
On the other hand, mages are human, Initiates doubly so. They have friends, enemies, lovers, bad days. You can hide from them, poison them, send their rival Initiatory groups against them, call Knight Errant when they start blowing stuff up etc. As NPC's these uber-mages deserve to be fleshed out enough to have real human weaknesses. As PC's they have probably developed them in the time it took to earn the 300 Karma we're discussing. The other side can and should work to find these weak spots and exploit the hell out of them. You probably don't want to use instantly lethal snipers against the PC's, but taking their loved ones hostage makes for some great dramatic tension. Against NPC's there's no shame in being clever. Whether its snipers, claymores or impersonating the mage's wife and stabbing him in his sleep, there are always options.
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Here's my 2 cents:
....
wait it's only one cent:
Give the control to the GM's. If a player is doing something that is imbalanced, it's the GM's job to react accordingly. There are plenty of times in the CORE books that say GM's have the last word about the character build, equipment bought, and even single actions in combat. If your game is out of whack, blame your GM, not Shadowrun.
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OK, my two cents on possession in particular:
There seems to be this idea that a Possession Trad Mage can call down a Force whatever spirit into himself and gain mad bonuses. I agree. However, there's this other idea that the Mage is running around as himself in full control of his body with these bonuses. I beg to differ. Once you're posessed, your body is not yours. You retain awareness, yes. The spirit has a certain number of services to fulfill, yes. That's not the same as driving. You're not jumped into the drone anymore, you're watching through the drone's eyes while your sprite controls it. It just so happens that the drone in this case is your very own, one of a kind, not replaceable body. Chummer, you just handed your body over to a living archetype. Don't think he's going to do things your way.
Spirits in a possession tradition have their own powers, but they also have strong motivations and personalities. What they are not known for is suppressing their own personalities to spare the person they're riding. Look up some voodoo loa and ask yourself if you really trust Erzulie to negotiate a contract for you. If you want some specific price, or some bit of gear, she has to obey and go for it. That's a service. If you want her to NOT walk your body into the back room with Mr. Johnson for a night of wild sex, that's a service. Spirits don't worry too much about consequences, either. Chango is not going to hide from Knight Errant when he can face them honorably. Baron Samedi doesn't think death is a big deal. He's going to kill someone or leave them alive based on what's funny to him. And every last one of them is going to leave the posession mage with the bill for cleanup.
On the other hand, you can hand over someone else's body. Its not as fun, not having all those bonus dice but you do have a friend with them and clean-up is his problem.
Edit: Unless you have Channeling Metamagic. Then you've got two people jumped into the drone, you and the spirit. If you don't want that to turn into a contest, you'll still give the personality of whatever is possessing you its due and all mental resistance is based on whoever has the worse stat.
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As Fastjack has said before, the balance is the karma cost....plus initiation takes TIME. If you have characters running around the game with initiate level 4 and a magic of 10, you really should be blaming the gamemaster not the system. My solution as a gamemaster would be a) make them self initiate (as they are too powerful to be taught by anyone else) and b) say "what character are you going to play while this character is taking the TIME to initiate." Make those metaplanar quests on a plane were time runs slower. Use your imagination. Failing that use the most powerful tool a gm has: the eraser on a number 2 pencil.
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Recall that you can upgrade armor to be hardened.
Where is this upgrade?
-k
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Doesn't exist in SR4, used to be an option back in 2nd ed, and possibly 3rd, but I don't remember anymore.
Closest thing to it these days is hiding behind a barrier - being that all barriers are effectively hardened - from a mechanical standpoint.
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Recall that you can upgrade armor to be hardened.
Where is this upgrade?
-k
Gel packs used to convert soft armor into hardened. Now they just add +1/+1 to the armor ratings.
It was back in 2nd and 3rd edition.