From: krischel@sal-sun133.usc.edu (Blackstar)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: Re: Why have street samauri? WAS: SRUN magicalness
Date: 7 Apr 1992 11:24:20 -0700
Organization: University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA
Distribution: world
Reply-To: krischel@sal-sun133.usc.edu (Blackstar)
NNTP-Posting-Host: sal-sun133.usc.edu


In article <NIGEL.92Apr6132458@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov>, nigel@rs733.GSFC.NASA.Gov writes:
|> 
|> So explain why there are samurai when magic does a much better job?
|> If you're worried about spell locks evaporating from magical attacks
|> you still have to consider the fact that an unsupported mundane team
|> is easy meat...so what if they die because someone blew up their locks
|> and killed them or simply slammed a deadly spell directly at them?
|> Because they got to shoot back?  Not likely...and even if they did
|> personal bullet barriers are available to the mage...not to mention
|> spirits and elementals.  How do you fight a fire elemental that
|> chooses to strafe a team that has no magical cover?  You can't melee
|> if you can't reach it and shooting it only wastes bullets. 

Mages glow.  Easy to see, easy to target.  Astral security measures will
drek the average mage, but won't even see the hazy aura of a street sam.
Magic is power, but for a price...

Remember, running the shadows isn't just how fast you can drek someone....
You have to be stealthy, conniving, cunning, and most of all, unnoticed.
If your party's mages are blasting things back and forth, believe me, those
higher up corp execs will take notice and hire a ritual sorcery team that
*no* PC mage could fight.  When magic is a weakness, it's nice to be a sam.
Sams don't get drekked when they drop their gun on a run.  Ever see a mage
get fried cause his wolf-bone foci dropped into the hands of the wrong corp?
Fried brains stink up a place, chummer....



|> 
|> If you have a corp with some wage mages (and spare karma) why spend
|> 400,000 nuyen for wired reflexes when 45,000 (and karma) will do?  

Schyeah, right.  Ever see a spell lock go poof?  That's 45K nuyen *and* a karma
point, down the drain.  Karma is worth much more than nuyen, buddy....



The
|> increased reactioned trooper is just as deadly to mundanes and just as
|> dead to anyone with magic...plus you get all sorts of interesting ways
|> to control the little bugger if he or she got out of line.  The on|y
|> downside is that there's all these little locks with some mage's link
|> to them running about...the question is whether that extra 400,000
|> nuyen might not buy sufficient magical materials to counter any ritual
|> nasties that show up.  The trade offs between having locks out there
|> and having a REAL nice library and alchemy lab might be worthwhile for
|> some mages.

Magical materials to counter ritual sorcery????  Sorry chummer, but there ain't
nothing you can do when the baddies get fifty or so of their best mages and
start chanting up a storm, with your name on it....Tho a "keep-me-safe-from-ritual
-sorcery" foci would be nice...:-)



|> 
|> I guess my main point is that mages can (and often are) faster and
|> impervious to the best that samurai can dish out but sammis have no
|> defense against magic.  Why have them around?  Expensive magic fodder?
|> 
|> Nigel


Like I said, mages glow.  I don't care if a mage can out firepower a street
sam.  People see mages and notice.  And being noticed ain't too good when
you're running the shadows....




>>>>>[Darkwind]<<<<<





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