From: covin@tartarus.uchicago.edu (David Covin)
Subject: Re: SRII Is Magic getting out of hand?
Organization: University of Chicago Computer Science
Date: Fri, 18 Dec 1992 20:18:43 GMT

In article <BzEvCr.Aww@jabba.ess.harris.com> jcarl@jabba.ess.harris.com (Joe Carl Jr.) writes:

>I started GM'ing a SRII game.  What I've noticed is that Magic is
>overwhelming.  Guns have become deadly true.  But Magic is out of hand.
>
>Magicians have massive dice pools to cast spells.  They practically
>never take drain.  And giving Mages increase reflexes I think was
>a major mistake.  The speed of a Sam was the only thing that balanced
>the two character types.
>
>Anyone have similiar experiences? 


Hm.  My experience is solely with playing in SRI.  Everything I've 
heard about SRII indicates that magic is much toned down from what
it was in SRI.  In particular, the fact that the target number for
resisting a spell in SRII is the spell's Force (rather than the
caster's Sorcery, as in SRI) encourages casters to use higher-Force
spells (ideally, Force 6), thus having more problems with Drain.
Likewise, I've heard that there's a limit on the number of possible
successes in a sustained spell, equal to the spell's Force; this also
strongly encourages high-Force spells.

The "massive dice pools," though, I can perhaps help you with.  The
same is true in SRI.  However, this is entirely determined by the
opposition which the PCs face.  If the "bad guys" don't have magical
support and the PCs do, the PCs will walk all over them.  However,
even one enemy Sorceror will force the PC mages to keep some spell
pool dice back for Spell Defense.  This will weaken them
significantly.

Also, mages are lousy at taking out other mages.  Generally,
combat-oriented sorcerors load up on spells that go against the
opponent's Willpower, like Mana Blast.  This works fine against
grunts; most mages have Willpower 6, though, and so are not nearly
such good targets.  Your Mana Bolt needs 6's to hit the enemy mage,
and you have to stage its damage up from L with extra successes; your
buddy the street sam, on the other hand, only needs 2s to hit the same
mage (smartgun), and his damage probably starts at at least 4M2.  Let
the street sams in the party take on the enemy mages, and the mages
take on the enemy street sams.  (This also gives the PC street sams
something to do, if you find that's a problem).

I agree that the Increase Reaction spell is a problem; the SRI version
is even worse than the SRII version, in that it increases both
Reaction and Initiative with the same spell (+1 Reaction and +1d6
Initiative per level).  The big problem with it, IMHO, is that if
you're going to spell-lock it (or sustain it with an elemental, or
Quicken it, or...), Increase Reaction +4 is not really any more
difficult to learn or cast than Increase Reaction +1.  If you want to
tweak the rules a bit, I would recommend changing this somehow;
perhaps by applying a version of the extra successes rule, saying that
to sustain Increase Attribute +n you need to cast it at at least Force
n...

In our campaign, it hasn't actually proven much of a problem.  There
were only one or two runs in which my combat-oriented Street Mage was
much faster than everybody else, and in those runs it only enabled me
to get myself Seriously wounded that much faster ("Yes, I want to be
the first one to take on the Ritual Sorcery spell's Counterattack
pool!").  After that, all the magically actives in the group got their
own Increase Reaction spell-locks, and the cybersams upgraded to Wired
Reflexes 3.  Now everyone is equally fast.  We're faster than grunts
by a significant margin, but every opponent worthy of the name that we
meet has his or her own Increase Reaction or Wired Reflexes to the
same level.  Since it was so easy for us to get, it's quite believable
that our opponents can get it easily too.

Now, I could increase my Initiative still further, but there's no real
point to doing so.  Since you can't get more than 4 actions (I hear
it's 3 in SRII) in a turn, having an ultra-high Initiative just means
that you take all 4 of your actions before everyone else-- and then
have to survive *their* attacks *without* any chance for your pools to
refresh in between.  It's suicidal, unless your first actions
eliminate all of the opposition.

So, in conclusion :) : 1) Mages' massive dice pools will go away if
you throw more mages against them (or else the PC mages, and/or their
friends, will fry) 2) Cybersams are balanced against mages not by
speed (they should be about equal), but by having mutually deadly
attacks (guns hurt mages, spells hurt street sams).  This *does* imply
that guns are less deadly against other street sams than against
mages; if this isn't true in your campaign, try to isolate the reasons
why. 

Hope this helps somewhat, maybe, kinda...

--
David Covin                           covin@despair.uchicago.edu