Hi!
Originally I decided not to post this but it seems that there is
demand for stuff to talk about ;)
Last weekend I played for a long time myself and because all the
players who usually are playing mages were absent, I decided to play a
mage myself. After that session everyone was the opinion that magic
totally rocks (before that they always wondered what actually is good
about magic because of the performance of the other two players).
I knew from SR3 that spirits can be cool when you are playing a
shaman. In SR4 they are even better because there are no domains
anymore.
Everything began with the job to search someone, kidnap her and her
boyfriend and keep them for two days. Thanks to the search-ability of
most spirits I cut planned two hours of searching to 10 minutes.
Detect life was perfect for getting anything I need to know about the
people in a room and watchers made clear that a hellhound was present
(and helped afterwards to watch exits for do not letting people out)
After that we broke into a room, thanks to silence onto that room the
following fight wasn't heard by anyone (a physical adept was smashed
by our orc and because he couldn't hinder me the people sleeping in
the same room who didn't hear anything were taken out via knockout --
that spell is just a killer. Force 10 and you have just a drain of 2P
- ha ha).
Anyway a chase followed and a spirit of air I let materialize in the
driver's cab of the van with the other target person let it crash
(quite a surprise for the driver). When Lone Star came the spirit's
concealment power and mass confusion helped a lot to escape easily.
Because of magic the run was cut down a lot in length and we had the
chance to play a second one where I wished that I had compel truth in
my repertoire (I have now) because it would have broken the run again
(we were accused of murder by the murder…with compel truth he couldn't
have done that and the run wouldn't have started at all…) Spirit's
were again a massive help, physical mask and improved invisibility as
well (not so much as in the last run because my rolls sucked immense
-- 11 dice and two or three successes and the GM regulary got 2-4
successes out of 3 or 4 dice…)
Being usually the GM and have seen now what one can do with magic and
especially with spirits (oh summoning failed…no problem, i just try
again…) I have to say that it seems to be a game breaker more than
before (I can't remember that it was so hefty in SR2 or SR3) I wonder
what a GM can do against a mage who knows it trade?
Putting up all the time mages on the other side, everywhere wards,
magical barriers, spirit armies and willpower 5/6-grunts just seem to
be a little bit unrealistic. But I have to say that I do not want to
spoil their fun as well (by just putting up unrealistic high measures
against mages and therefore giving them no chance to use their powers)
Therefore - what do you do with your mages?
Niels
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