Steps to Casting"1. Choose the Spell you wish to cast at the target
The spell you're casting is
Manabolt (SR4A, pg 204)
Type:
M Range:
LOS Damage:
P Duration:
I DV:
(F/2)If you wanted to trade your hard-target physical damage spells for stun spells, they work equally well, and with a little less burn on the brainpan. For Instance:
Stunbolt (SR4A, pg 205)
Type:
M Range:
LOS Damage:
S Duration:
I DV:
(F/2) - 12. Choose the Force for the spell, up to twice your magic rating
You chose Force 5, equal to your Magic Rating. I'm using the sheet
here for reference.
3. Add you Magic to your pool
Magic 5
4. Add your Spellcasting to your pool
Spellcasting (Spec: Combat Spells) 5 (7)
5. Add the bonus for your mentor spirit to your pool, if applicable.
You don't have a mentor spirit, but this is one area where I think it would be beneficial- when I'm playing a mage, looking through the mentors and figuring out which ones would work and which ones wouldn't also helps me to get a handle on the character. Still, you have 12 dice at this point, not too shabby.
6. Add the bonus for a Spellcasting Focus to your pool, if it is of the correct type and you do not wish to save it to resist drain later.
You have a Spellcasting Focus (Combat) (Force 2). For bookkeeping purposes, I'm going to save that for Drain later.
You also have a Sustaining Focus (Health) (Force 2), which I would have recommended using to sustain your Increased Reflexes spell. More on that in a bit.
7. Subtract any Wound modifiers (or modifiers from sustained spells) from the pool.
Kinsey took 1 stun damage while casting
Increased Reflexes at the start of combat. He's also sustaining Increased Reflexes for a -2 penalty, with no reason that I understand, so let's go ahead and move that to his Sustaining Focus.
8. Roll your pool dice, add up your Hits. If you glitch, tell the gamemaster.
Magic (5) + Spellcasting/Combat Spells (7) + Wound (-1) = 11 Dice
11d6.hits(5) → [5,1,6,1,4,2,4,6,5,3,6] = (5)
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3637966/9. Take the lesser of your Hits and the spell's Force; this is your Actual Hits Total.
In this case, the number of hits (5) is the same as the Spell's force (5), so there's nothing to worry about. Typically, you take the lesser of the two options, which gives a good reason to not just cast at low force and pump it up with a big dicepool.
EDIT: The max number of hits you can have on the test is equal to the spell's force. For Force 5, you can have a maximum of 5 hits. This prevents highly skillful (high sorcery skill) or highly powerful (high Magic rating) to cast a force 1 spell and disintegrate someone. With a max dice pool of 12, in theory you could get all hits, which would mean at force 5 that would be 17 damage!!! So that's why this rule is in place, the max damage a Force 5 spell can do is 10, which is almost enough to kill someone outright if they fail resistance.
-Ingo10. If the spell is resisted, and your target is living, the GM will roll resistance pool and subtract from your actual hits. If your target is non-living, the GM will compare your actual hits to the threshold. If your actual hits is reduced to zero or less (in the former case), or if your actual hits falls short of the threshold (in the latter case), skip to step 12.
Resistance for Mana spells is Willpower. If this had been a physical spell, not only would the target get to resist with Body,
but he or she would also be allowed to use armor to resist damage. EDIT: See SR4A pg203. Direct Physical spells are resisted by Body only, not Body + Armor. Direct Physical spells exist only in the astral plane, which is why they bypass armor. Indirect Physical spells travel through the physical plane, essentially erupting from the caster (usually hands) and traveling to the target. Anything in between the caster and target will get it (i.e. Armor). These spells usually cause some kind of elemental damage which is detailed in the spell description. For example, Flamethrower does fire elemental damage, which is resisted by half Impact armor. The armor would then probably catch on fire afterwards. These types of spells were called Elemental Manipulation spells in SR3.
-Ingo In this case, we're going to say you targeted one of the 'lowly normal' Red Samurai instead of the Lieutenant. The target has a willpower of 4, and will roll to resist damage normally.
4d6.hits(5) → [3,3,1,4] = (0)
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3637967/11. Tell the GM your Actual Hits, and the Force of the Spell. Your GM will determine the effect of the spell.
The red samurai rolled a glitch on her Damage Resistance, so in addition to taking 5 boxes of damage, we'll say one of the target's implants stops working- 1d6 (5) so her Muscle Toner begins functioning ineffectively, and she loses 1 dice to Agility tests. We'll leave her at the same initiative, for the sake of bookkeeping, but she's going to regret that here in a little while.
Resisting Drain12. Start a new pool, add your Willpower to it.
Willpower (4)
13. Add the Attribute that your tradition uses to resist Drain.
Kinsey is a straight-up Mage, and resists with Logic (3)
14. If you did not add your Spellcasting Focus rating to your spellcasting pool, add it now.
Here's your bonus (+2). That's why we saved it for later.
15. Roll your pool dice. Subtract one from the Drain Damage value for each hit.
Note that this pool is not reduced due to sustaining a spell or wound modifiers. This is important- and a detail I had missed before this game; damage resistance rolls are almost never subject to modifiers.
Anyway, Drain Value for Manabolt is F/2. Drain is rounded down (SR4a, pg 203, 'Drain Value'). Force 5 / 2 = 2.5 rounded down to 2. Kinsey needs to resist 2 drain.
Kinsey has Willpower (4) + Logic (3) + Sustaining Focus (2) = 9
9d6.hits(5) → [5,6,2,6,4,1,4,3,1] = (3)
http://invisiblecastle.com/roller/view/3637974/16. If you did not reduce the Drain Damage value to zero, apply the damage to your condition monitor; physical if the force was greater than your Magic rating, stun otherwise.
Kinsey resist with zero drain, after inflicting 5 damage to a badass Renracu Red Samurai without breaing a sweat.
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