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[Ingo Monk]

SR4 pg 85

Spells
Magicians can only cast spells that
they have learned. During character creation,
players can spend Build Points to
have their magician character learn spells
before beginning the game. Learning a
spell costs 3 BP. (Players from previous
editions should note that you don’t have
to learn the spell at a certain Force.) The
maximum number of spells your character
can learn during character creation is
equal to twice the highest rating of your
Spellcasting or Ritual Spellcasting skills.

SR4 pg 171-172

Force
A spell’s only attribute is its Force—the measure of the
spell’s raw power. A spell’s Force helps determine its effectiveness
and its Drain. The Force of a spell is chosen by the caster
during spellcasting, typically at a value up to the Magic attribute
of the magician who cast it. The maximum Force that a
spell can be cast at is equal to twice the character’s Magic.

...

A spell’s Force limits the number of hits (not net hits)
that can be achieved on the Spellcasting Test. So if you cast
a Force 3 spell and get 5 hits, only 3 of those hits count.

...

Overcasting: Magicians may cast spells at a Force higher
than their Magic ratings (known as overcasting), but this causes
the spell Drain to be Physical damage rather than Stun.

SR4 pg 167

Drain
...
Drain is usually Stun damage,
though there are situations in which it can be
transformed into Physical damage.

SR4 pg 174

(Sorcery section)
Step 6: Resist Drain
Magicians roll
Willpower + an attribute
appropriate to their tradition
(Charisma for shamans
and Logic for mages)
to resist Drain. Each hit on
the Drain Resistance Test
reduces the Drain Value
of the spell by one. Note
that wound modifiers or
sustained spells have no effect
on the character’s dice
pool for Drain Resistance
Tests. Drain damage for
spells is Stun damage unless overcasting.

Note the last line in the last quote, "Drain damage is Stun damage unless overcasting."  Also I don't recall there ever being a situation where drain is automatically physical damage.  Even the healing spells in SR3, whose drain was equal to the number of damage boxes on the hurt person, was Stun.

Hope that helps!

[Curris]

Very helpful, thank you.

I thought that there was a spell or situation that had physical drain, but I'm at school now. I will look for it tonight. Of course, I may have just imagined it, too, so no worries.

[Retread]

Uh oh, who was it that was telling me that spells with immediate physical drain border on Blood Magic?

I suspect that all magic in SR4 is stun unless you go over your Magic rating in Force whereby it becomes physical and all the drain is calculated in points (since target numbers don't exist) and penalties reduce your dice. However, the X karma thing bothers me, since a formula is a formula and the complexity is based on the force learned and drain is relative to the breadth of the change inflicted.

I mean, what's the difference in drain between a Powerbolt and a Powerball spell?

[Ingo Monk]

Learning a spell (after chargen) costs 5 Karma per spell.

Powerbolt drain: (F/2)+1
Powerball drain: (F/2)+3

So it's 2 points

[Retread]

Heh, so what's the drain on a touch range Ork only stun spell?

That's a joke, but I bet it's something like: (Force/2)-3

[Curris]

It's called a "punch"  

[bull30548]

No against the ork man not your hand. lol

Listen my gamemaster came up with a few house rules and other things to help compensate for what appears to be an imbalance.  But he can't anticipate everything that can happen in a game.   here another imbalance for you guys they took away the whole focus rules almost.  the only rule that seemed to stay is you can't have more bound focuses than your charisma rating.  But think about it you become almost unstoppable with like three or four of those focuses.  Lets see armor, improved invisiblity,  improved reflexes, and improved ability reaction.  With all those it hard to hit you, hard to damage you and to top it all off you can still throw out another sustaining spell to ward off other things.  The only counter to magic we have found is magic really.

Oh by the way there are some otherthings that have changed instead of being able toallocate spell defense you have to take a skill counter spelling to do it now.  Thus more karma being spent.

Oh where oh where is Sr4 Magic Companion to help rectify these things. lol

[Retread]

Focus addiction-- From SR3-- Whereby you can only have a number of active Foci equal to twice your magic rating in Force. Else, you must check for magic loss every Combat Turn or thereabouts. It's quite nasty.

[Ingo Monk]

Heh, so what's the drain on a touch range Ork only stun spell?

That's a joke, but I bet it's something like: (Force/2)-3

Touch stun spell is called 'Knockout' and drain is just like you guessed.  If there were spell creation rules, you could probably create an ork-only version of that spell with the drain being F/2-4 or -5 probably.

No against the ork man not your hand. lol

Listen my gamemaster came up with a few house rules and other things to help compensate for what appears to be an imbalance.  But he can't anticipate everything that can happen in a game.   here another imbalance for you guys they took away the whole focus rules almost.  the only rule that seemed to stay is you can't have more bound focuses than your charisma rating.  But think about it you become almost unstoppable with like three or four of those focuses.  Lets see armor, improved invisiblity,  improved reflexes, and improved ability reaction.  With all those it hard to hit you, hard to damage you and to top it all off you can still throw out another sustaining spell to ward off other things.  The only counter to magic we have found is magic really.

Oh by the way there are some otherthings that have changed instead of being able toallocate spell defense you have to take a skill counter spelling to do it now.  Thus more karma being spent.

Oh where oh where is Sr4 Magic Companion to help rectify these things. lol

The point of magic is that it's supposed to be powerful, albeit very rare.  IIRC, the total percentage of the population that is magically active (those who can cast spells, those who can summon, adepts, etc.) is 0.1%  In a given group of 1,000,000 people, there are 1,000 magically active people.  I don't post any limitations on our group, we have 1 hermetic and 1 mystic adept.  At the same time I can always throw an enemy mage into the mix to cause them problems.  Also, while your group's mage 'buffs' up with sustained spells into foci, an astrally projecting mage (or even a spirit) can come along and dispel the sustained spells.  

In regards to your scenario, the GM can regulate the world as he/she sees fit.  If your GM wants to run a low-magic game, perhaps your group can discuss limitations as far as magic is concerned?  Maybe only allow 1 magic user for the entire group?  

In any case Improved Invisibility is a physical illusion spell, which is resisted by Intuition.  The spell doesn't automatically work, each person who looks at the invisible person gets a chance to resist the spell with Intuition + Counterspelling.  Though if they don't get more hits than the person who casted the spell they are fully affected by the illusion.  Counterspelling is actually a very useful skill, I suggest your GM look into it (SR4 p. 175).  Also realize that invisibility only affects vision, people can still detect an invisible person through the other senses.  A sensor device with olfactory (smell) senses, or sound senses can detect an invisible person.  Also, if the mage in question touches any sensitive device or steps on a pressure plate they would become detected (but still invisible).  While spells are functioning on a person that person would glow brightly on the astral plane, so any astral nasties floating around could become curious also.

Just a bunch of ideas, hope they're helpful.

[Retread]

Heh, so the basic premise here is that:

+1 Drain = +1 drain Target #

+2 Drain = +1 Drain Damage Level

If you compare the two systems. Which does make more sense with regards to balance.

[Ingo Monk]

The magic system is kinda interesting now since it the system uses damage points rather than damage levels.

Spellcasting example:
A mage vs. a thug.

A mage has magic rating 5, spellcasting skill at 5, and the manabolt spell.  He casts the spell using his Magic + Spellcasting (10 dice) and gets 4 hits let's say (remember all TN#'s are 5 now, so each 5+ is called a 'hit')

So the thug gets hit by the spell with 3 net hits.  He can try to resist the spell itself using Willpower (since it's a mana spell) + Counterspelling (if a magician on his side was allocating it).  If he rolls his Willpower and gets at least 4 hits, the spell is resisted and does no damage.  Let's assume he doesn't make the roll.

So the spell was cast at Force 5 and succeeded with 3 net hits.  It does 8 points of damage, resisted by Willpower.  Characters have a physical damage monitor of 8 + (1/2 Body) rounding up (so the average person can take 10 points of physical damage).

The mage then resists drain.  Drain for Manabolt is (F/2).  Cast at Force 5, the drain is 3 points of stun damage.  The mage rolls Logic + Willpower (plus any other drain bonuses) to resist drain.

[Retread]

I disagree with the "Counterspelling" skill as it is just Sorcery in reverse. It shouldn't have its own skill.

[Ingo Monk]

Yeah, it reminds me of the Shielding Initiate ability in SR3 kinda.

Personally I don't have a problem with Counterspelling as a skill.  You could easily look at someone with a Spellcasting skill of 2 and a Counterspelling skill of 5 as someone who focused more stopping spells rather than casting them.  And the other way around there could be someone who focused all their training on throwing spells out but never spent any time on figuring out how to protect themselves.  

A magician using Counterspelling in SR4 is described as someone who is 'actively "jamming" the mana around him.'  It's a pool of dice that can be used to protect the magician and anyone he/she sees fit in his/her line of sight.  It can defend against direct as well as indirect (illusion/detection type) spells.

Also, there are Skill Groups, which is a bunch of related skills grouped together that a character can purchase at a higher cost.  There's a Sorcery skill group that includes the skills Counterspelling, Ritual Spellcasting, and Spellcasting.  Since characters in SR4 are built on a build-point system rather than the priority system of SR3 there's a lot more points to go around.

Purchasing skills at chargen is 4 BP per skill point, while purchasing a skill group is 10 BP per skill point.  So buying Counterspelling, Ritual Spellcasting, and Spellcasting all at rating 5 would cost you 60 BP while the Sorcery skill group at rating 5 would give you all 3 skills at rating 5 for only 50 BP.  One downfall of skill groups though is it doesn't allow you to specialize any of the skills in the group.

[Retread]

Erm, if I recall, Spell Defense was a specialization of the Sorcery skill, along with Dispelling:

Sorcery (Dispelling, Spell Defense, and Spell Casting)

Conjuring (Banishing, Summoning, Controlling)

[DarkerSavant]

The max rank in skill groups is 4. You can only have one skill starting at 6, or two at 5 and the rest can be no higher than 4 at character creation.

 And Sorcery Skill Group is: Counterspelling, Ritual Spellcasting, and Spellcasting.


And you are not allowed to Specialize a skill that is a part of a skill group.

So if you want to start a character with Rank 4 Spellcasting and then specialize in Combat Spells. It will cost you a pretty 26 BP.
And then if you bought the other two skills at rank 4 that would be 32 BP for a total of 58 BP for 3 rank 4's skills with one specialization VS. 40 BP for a rank 4 Skill Group.

Final analysis.......... Skill Groups are the shiznit.